Trend Following Done Right
How systematic exits let us ride gold miners +120% and silver +75% without blinking.
The Reason I Don’t Get Shaken Out — And Why This Year Worked So Well
There’s one reason I don’t panic every time a pullback hits:
I don’t exit unless the system tells me to exit.
That’s it.
No emotions.
No guessing.
No “I think the move is over.”
Just signals.
This year is the perfect illustration of why that discipline matters — because sticking to the process produced three of the best trades of the entire macro landscape:
GDXJ up +120% YTD
Silver up +75% YTD (with futures & options trades we recommended up 5–10x)
International equities up 30–70% while the S&P 500 can’t even clear +20%
And none of that happened because I was predicting anything.
It happened because I refused to get shaken out while the signals stayed bullish.
Let’s walk through it and learn how you can build a similar model for yourself.
Junior Gold Miners: A Textbook Breakout That Paid the Patient
📈 Chart: Junior Gold Miners Monthly GDXJ 0.00%↑
GDXJ spent years trapped under a massive resistance zone. Every macro tourist swore miners were dead. Every pullback brought doom narratives. Every wiggle lower had people screaming “gold is finished.”
But the signals never flipped.
Price held the breakout. Trend stayed intact. Trailing stops never triggered.
Most traders got shaken out three, four, five times on nothing but noise.
The system kept us in.
That’s how you catch a +120% YTD move instead of a handful of small wins and a bunch of stress.
Silver: The Monster You Only Catch If You Sit Through the Pain
📈 Chart: Silver Monthly $XAGUSD
Silver didn’t just trend — it detonated.
From the macro backdrop to the multi-decade base to the breakout through $30 and the run toward $50, the setup was obvious if you had the stomach to sit through the consolidation and chop.
Most people didn’t.
We did — because the signals never flipped bearish.
And because we stayed with it:
Spot silver is up 75% YTD
Our options and futures positions hit 5–10x
And we’re still in the trade because nothing has violated the trend
This is exactly why I don’t micromanage every candle.
Big trades require time — and a process that keeps you emotionally out of the way.
International Equities: The Quiet Leaders of 2025
📈 Chart: Poland ETF Monthly EPOL 0.00%↑
From Day 1 this year, our international scans showed something crystal clear:
The real strength wasn’t in the U.S. — it was abroad.
Poland, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, India, South Korea — they all showed the same behavior:
Higher lows
Clean breakouts
Strong relative strength vs. SPX
Zero trend violations
Some positions hit +70% at their peaks.
Most are still holding up better than the U.S. even as the S&P 500 fails to clear +20%.
And again — not because we made a heroic macro call.
But because we followed the signals and refused to exit early.
The System Is the Edge
This year is the perfect example of why systematic exits matter:
They keep you in the big trades
They stop you from panicking during noise
They prevent emotional selling
They force you to let winners run
They let compounding actually happen
Most people are great at finding ideas.
Most people are terrible at holding them.
Your edge isn’t in finding gold miners, silver, or Poland.
Your edge is in following the rules when the market tests your resolve.
This year, the rules worked — and the results speak for themselves.
We’re up +119% this year — and we didn’t do it by guessing.
We did it by following process, respecting signals, and staying in the trades that mattered.
If you want to trade global macro with a real system — not emotions — join AAO Premium.
👉 Get the signals, the portfolios, and the strategy that produced +119% YTD.
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