David Lundgren on momentum investing
From “How to improve trend following performance” – David Lundgren · · Better System Trader
“When we credit momentum with working over time, it's not the signal that's generating the profit; it's the fact that the process has a positive skew that prevents left tail events and captures right tail events, which is critical to generating positive returns.”
On , David Lundgren, Chief Investment Officer at HANCOCK WHITNEY CORP, spoke about momentum investing during “How to improve trend following performance” – David Lundgren on Better System Trader.
About David Lundgren
David Lundgren, Chief Investment Officer at Hancock Whitney, has discussed trend following and market analysis in two podcast appearances from 2021. In a September 2021 appearance on "BST Live," Lundgren addressed how to improve trend following performance. He stated that trend following works because trends are driven by economics and growth, and that momentum has struggled during deflationary periods but tends to perform well in inflationary cycles. Lundgren described four unavoidable conditions for a trend following buy: breaking a downtrend, breaking the last high of the downtrend, the short-term average crossing the long-term average, and the long-term average turning higher. He also noted that despite a high percentage of stocks being above their 200-day moving average, only about 34-47% are actually trending, which he said reveals a "knife-fight market" beneath the surface. In an April 2021 appearance on "Behind the Charts" with David Keller, Lundgren discussed his career history and investment philosophy. He said that every career change he has made occurred at a major turning point in the market, and that to be a portfolio manager one needs "ice in your veins" to weather the pressures of managing money. Lundgren stated that the index often conceals the truth, making bottom-up analysis important for connecting market dots. He advised investors to keep a detailed journal of trades and decisions to learn from their own behavior, and noted that short-term time frames are driven by emotions where mistakes are made. Lundgren also said he does not put much weight on backtesting because data sets before 1980 or 1990 are unreliable and regime changes like quantitative easing alter market behavior in ways backtests cannot detect.