Stocks & Commodities V. 37:12 (34–39): Interview: Following The Trend With Perry Kaufman by Karl Montevirgen

Interview: Following The Trend With Perry Kaufman by Karl Montevirgen

Perry J. Kaufman has been involved in trading, research, and advisory functions at commercial banks, securities houses, central banks, and hedge funds since 1971. His current area of specialty is the design of trading systems, algorithms, and indexes. He is president of KaufmanSignals.com, which offers daily trading signals by subscription based on strategies it developed. He can be reached through his website at www.KaufmanSignals.com.

Starting out as a “rocket scientist” in the aerospace industry, Kaufman worked on the navigation and control systems for the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, the predecessor of the Hubble Observatory. He was also involved in the development of navigation systems for Project Gemini, which were later used for Apollo missions. The earliest systematic programs for trading used exponential smoothing, a technique developed in aerospace for estimating the path of missiles. After leaving the aerospace industry, he worked in the following decades as a commercial hedger, a portfolio manager, a consultant, and a quantitative analyst for a hedge fund with a focus on managed futures trading strategies.

In addition to trading, Kaufman writes extensively on markets and strategies, and has contributed many articles to this magazine. His seminal book Trading Systems and Methods, first published in 1978, has just seen the release of its sixth edition. His book A Guide To Developing A Successful Algorithmic Trading Strategy was published in 2016. Kaufman has been a frequent speaker at universities and conferences and has made many media appearances.

S&C contributor Karl Montevirgen spoke with Perry Kaufman on September 13, 2019 to focus on price and momentum divergence, and how traders can exploit changes in the markets that have occurred over the past two decades.