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Other trademarks and service marks appearing on the Trend Following network of sites may be owned by Trend Following or by other parties including third parties not affiliated with Trend Following. | Information on the Trend Following™ network of sites may not be copied, reprinted, or redistributed without written permission from Michael Covel and or Trend Following (but written permission is easily and typically granted). The information on this website is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Michael Covel and his community. He has been managing his own money for 35 years, with some success.A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.Today's post is a profile of Guru investor Gary Bielfeldt, who appears in Jack Schwager's book Market Wizards. How did you end up becoming a trader? Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who may retain copyright as noted. He is profiled in Jack Schwager’s book The New Market Wizards, where his chapter is called The Human Chart Encyclopedia.Al Weiss – I couldn’t find a photo – is a commodity trader who uses charting techniques to trade within his firm AZF Commodity Management.Weiss generally kept a low profile and resisted Schwager’s attempts to interview him for many years.He was also worried that publicity would attract the wrong sort of clients.His chapter (one of the shortest in the book, and which Schwager describes as one of his most difficult) is called The Human Chart Encyclopedia.When he was in his twenties, Weiss invented the urethane skateboard wheel, which made him rich.Weiss then spent four years looking at thousands of chart patterns – dating back as far as the 1840s – before he ever traded for real.Weiss had a great track record at the time of his interview with Schwager.And these gains were made with low drawdowns – his largest loss was 17% during 1986.Weiss likes to invest his own money with other traders.He tries to blend their styles to ensure both outperformance and low drawdowns.Weiss is a technical trader, who looks for chart patterns.Weiss attributes his better performance than similar technical traders to the fact that most traders only look at more recent charts (say the past 30 years).He finds multi pattern combinations more reliable, but claims that:Weiss identified the last commodities deflationary cycle as commencing in 1980, making it almost 12 years old at the time of the interview.In fact the bear market in commodities limped on until the far end of the 1990s, before a bull market in the 2000s (the China-driven “supercycle”).There’s not too much for the UK private investor in this short chapter, other than the fact that some people seem to be able to make charting work independently of fundamentals.Weiss’ insights into using chart pattern combinations rather than individual patterns – and his overlay of economic cycles – are interesting, but without specific examples they aren’t directly tradeable.As Schwager notes, Weiss’ enormous levels of research and his own interpretation of his outperformance imply that to make money from charts, you need to approach Weiss’ level of skill.Mike is the owner of 7 Circles, and a private investor living in London. Small town guy starts at a 1970s gas station and becomes a trading legend worth $100 million. I spent four years of solid research before doing any serious trading. What We do? Our company, by having an advanced and … After literally thousands of hours of poring over charts, going back as far in history as I could, I began to recognize certain patterns that became the basis of my trading approach. It was not an overnight process.