EP19 // Mike Melissinos On Trend Following, Trading A Fund And The Trading Tribe

Mike Melissinos landed a job at Bear Sterns shortly after graduating from college and he thought he had it made. But as luck would have it, Bear went down about six months after he joined.

This turned out to be good luck however because it really made him examine the people who he looked up to and the life that he really wanted to live. He came out of the experience with a whole different perspective.

After Bear, he decided to figure out how to invest for himself and got turned on to trend following. If you are not familiar with this style of trading, there are some links in the resources section below.

The one thing that stood out to me in this interview was when Mike mentioned how trend following felt more intuitive to him. It was something that he felt he could embrace and run with.

I think that this is a really important point because many times traders try to trade methods that are not in tune with their personality. That is what leads to blowups or erratic performance.

We talked about the inherit strengths and weaknesses of trend following and how he sought out the knowledge he needed to become a better trader. One thing that helped Mike a lot was the New York Trading Tribe.

If you have never heard of The Trading Tribe before, it is a series of groups started by legendary trader Ed Seykota. It is sort of a support group, but it is actually more like a development process for traders and is based on Ed’s work in trading psychology. Mike talks about it in more detail in the interview, so check it out.

We also get into a ton of other topics in this interview. Mike talks sports, his fanatical obsession with health and how his fiancée has made him a better trader. He also gets into the details of how he started his fund and how he treats his investors a little differently than most fund managers.

This interview is over an hour long, so I’m really grateful to Mike for taking the time out to talk to me. It was a fun interview for me and I hope you enjoy it too.