Gary Smith

My last book, How I Trade For a Living, was published in October 1999. That was a few months before the multi-year decline in the markets led by the crash in the technology sector. Because much of my success in the 1990s was riding the technology wave, many traders assumed I was just a one hit wonder and never to be heard from again. But that has not been the case. In the 26 years since How I Trade For a Living was published, I have been far more profitable dollar wise than I ever was in the 1980s and 1990s.

But my success since 2000 hasn't come from daytrading stock index futures or swing trading technology funds and other sector equity funds. Instead, it has come from trading high yield corporate, high yield municipal, high yield Nordic, emerging markets, catastrophe, and securitized bond mutual funds. The last 16 years since 2009 have been the most profitable where I have averaged two hundred forty six thousand dollars annually with less than a 1% drawdown along the way. It just demonstrates the power of the compound effect of consistently and persistently compounding one’s capital over time. My attraction to the bond funds are their trend persistency over long periods of time combined with their low volatility. I have always preached that traders need to find their own trading niche. I found mine in the bond funds and using the same momentum indicators I used while trading the stock index futures and equity funds.