Interview  |  BON 2007

Interview: Bo Yoder by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan

Interview: Bo Yoder by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan Bo Yoder is a professional trader, author, and consultant to the financial industry on matters of trading and risk management. He is a frequent contributor to domestic and international trading publications, and also writes for RealMoney.com, Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES, Traders, and Active Trader magazines. In addition, Yoder publishes the Easy Forex Course at easyforexcourse.com, is a featured speaker internationally at seminars and industry expos, and continues to work with individuals and market professionals on matters of risk management and trader development. His latest book, Mastering Futures Trading, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2004. S&C Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan interviewed Yoder on January 18, 2007, via telephone interview. BO, how did you get interested in trading? About 1995–96, I was working as a cross-country ski instructor during the winter, and I bought a few shares of stock in the company that my father worked for. At the end of the skiing season I had actually made more money on the stock — knowing nothing about the stock market — than I did working my job in the cold. That got me interested in the financial markets. What did you do? I started reading a lot of the standard investment information — Graham- Dodd, Warren Buffett, those sorts of investing-type tomes. I learned a lot about SEC forms and actually did an internship in a money management firm working in the research department, where I learned how the market ignores fundamentals sometimes and rewards either bad business plans or no business plans. That was the beginning of the Internet bubble. I started to learn more about trading versus speculation versus investment. I became a disciple of the quote from George Soros — the one that goes, “The way to make money in the market is to find a trend that is based on a false premise and to ride that trend until just before it is disproven.” You can go back and look at a lot of the crazes we have seen, everything from oil to the tech bubble. The Krispy Kreme case is one of my favorites. At one time I believe it had a bigger market cap than GE. I think you may be right! So you can find some markets that become maniacal. There is a lot of money to be made in those trends because they are based on emotion and greed and fear rather than fundamentals. The reality is fundamentals don’t change quickly, whereas perceptions do. So that was my transformation from investor to trader. During the last five, six, seven years I’ve been trading full time. I started off mostly in stocks and then moved to futures, and most recently I have been trading almost exclusively in the currency markets.

by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan