Savouring the Trend: Michael Covel at Akuna in Ho Chi Minh City
In this second edition of Savouring the Trend, Adam Havryliv and Richard Brennan journeyed to Akuna in Ho Chi Minh City, the Michelin-starred stage of chef Sam Aisbett, to share an evening with Michael Covel — the chronicler of the Turtle Traders and voice of trend following. Over a daring tasting menu that stretched from slipper lobster to porcupine, the conversation traced Covel’s decades-long mission: uncovering the secrets of the Turtles, distilling the power of simple rules, and urging traders to confront uncertainty with courage. From bestselling books and films to a thousand-episode podcast, Covel’s legacy is a living testament to systematic trading — and in Saigon’s restless energy, his philosophy feels right at home.
For our second edition of Savouring the Trend, we travelled to the beating heart of Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City (also known as Saigon).
Perched above its restless streets, Akuna – the Michelin-starred flagship restaurant of Australian chef Sam Aisbett – offered the perfect setting. Known for daring use of native ingredients and a boundary-pushing tasting menu, it mirrored the restless energy of our guest: Michael Covel, the man who chronicled the greatest trading experiment of all time.
Covel is, at his core, an inquisitive journalist. In the early 2000s he was hunting for a big story when he caught whispers of an experiment that few outsiders truly understood: the Turtle Traders. Conceived by Richard Dennis and Bill Eckhardt, the project set out to prove that great traders could be trained, not born. The secrecy of the experiment and the outsized success of its participants lit a fire in Covel.
But uncovering the tale wasn’t easy. He faced legal pushback from those who preferred the story never saw daylight. Yet, armed with persistence and a sense of purpose, he pressed on — convinced that what he had unearthed was too important to bury.
Covel’s publishing journey began with Trend Following (2004), his first and still most influential book. It was a manifesto for systematic trading: rules-based, price-driven, and disciplined. The book struck a chord globally, carving him a space as the foremost storyteller of this approach.
That success laid the foundation for The Complete TurtleTrader (2007), which finally told the inside story of Dennis and Eckhardt’s radical experiment. With interviews, documents, and narratives pieced together through relentless digging, Covel brought to light what had been whispered about for decades — a group of ordinary people turned into multimillion-dollar traders by following simple rules.
He would go on to expand the philosophy: Trend Commandments (2011), a bold set of lessons aimed at debunking Wall Street myths, and The Little Book of Trading (2011), a compact, accessible guide emphasising courage and discipline. Today, Covel extends this legacy with online courses, encouraging a new generation to “relive” the Turtle experiment and test themselves against the same timeless principles.
Not content with just books, Covel also turned filmmaker. In 2009, he released Broke: The New American Dream, a documentary that captured the failings of Wall Street, the fragility of conventional investing, and the urgency of thinking differently about risk. It remains a sharp visual companion to his written work.
If the books and the film told the story, the Trend Following podcast made him part of the global conversation. Since 2012, Covel has recorded more than a thousand episodes, interviewing Nobel Prize winners, hedge fund legends, behavioural economists, and even military strategists. The breadth is remarkable: it is less a trading podcast than a catalogue of how humans confront risk and uncertainty.
Since 2013, Covel has called Saigon home. He speaks often, and publicly, about his love for the city, its people, and – tastefully – the women who embody its openness, energy, and warmth. For him, Vietnam is capitalism at its rawest and most dynamic: ambitious, hungry, unapologetically forward-looking. Sitting with him, it’s clear the city has seeped into his worldview – alive, noisy, and full of possibility.
Akuna’s tasting menu was itself a journey. We began with a sparkling sake on arrival: crisp, celebratory, a perfect start.
From there, each course paired seamlessly with our conversation:
- Live Hokkaido sea scallop, goose neck barnacles, sour quark, young lotus seeds, pickled green durian, plankton
- Hand shelled spanner crab, pickled banana heart, fennel marmalade, macadamia, horseshoe crab “caviar”
- Butter poached slipper lobster, slipper lobster velvet, local samphire, mountain pepper, golden pearls
- Smoked pork jowl, firefly squid, black moss, lettuce heart, caramelised fish sauce
- Roasted brush tailed porcupine, Australian winter truffle, celery root, yeast crumbs, coastal sea blight – Akuna’s audacious signature. Covel noted that, like trend following, it demanded courage!
- Vietnamese crown melon, verbena cream, caramelised filo, cocoa seed juice caramel
At one point, chef Sam Aisbett himself emerged from the kitchen. Our applause earned a fist pump from him — a moment of Aussie solidarity that sealed the spirit of the night.
When asked what lessons he would pass on, Covel distilled decades of work into four simple tips:
- Simple rules.
- Follow price.
- Work up the courage to do it.
- Seize the day.
As night fell and the lights of Saigon glittered beneath us, Covel reflected that trend following, like life in his adopted city, is about confronting uncertainty with conviction. The rules are simple, but the courage to follow them is rare.
The evening closed with a total of 31,000,000 VND:
- Food: 4,900,000 VND per person.
- Wine & supplements: the balance, covering pairings and additional bottles.
Using exchange rates from 23 August 2025:
- ~AUD 1,815 total (~286 AUD pp for food)
- ~USD 1,176 total (~186 USD pp for food)
- ~EUR 1,004 total (~159 EUR pp for food)
- ~CHF 1,025 total (~162 CHF pp for food)
A memorable investment, paid in porcupine, pinot, and perspective.
