Michael Covel talks with Dave Rapach, a professor of economics at the John Cook School of Business at Saint Louis University. Rapach comes at trend following from an academic perspective, and he explains it from this vantage point. Covel and Rapach discuss why trend following works from an academic standpoint; "publish or perish" and the difficulty of publishing scholarly articles on trend following; early research on trend following, the random walk theory, and Burton Malkiel’s “A Random Walk Down Wall Street”; Warren Buffett, Bill Dunn, and survivorship bias; a paper that Rapach traces to the reintroduction of trend following and technical analysis to the academic community; measuring systematic risk; Eugene Fama’s recent nobel prize; how the trend following world has been neglected by the academic community; how Rapach found his way into the academic finance world; Covel’s experience digging in to trend following research in the early to mid 1990’s; some of Rapach’s recent papers; and why recessions are good for trend following. For more information on Dave Rapach, visit http://sites.slu.edu/rapachde. Want a free trend following DVD go to trendfollowing.com/win.