What’s hot this week? To be honest, having a shelf of books in the office does really help.
Sometime ago, we were able to get our hands on all the three editions of Market Wizards authored by Jack Schwager [Thanks to Deepak for storing them] and there was one thing specifically that stuck with me – Turtle Traders.
Richard Dennis and William Eckhardt, two big traders, had an argument in the early 1980s: Could a trader be trained, or was it something you were born with? A famous bet was placed, and Dennis proclaimed he would train traders like they breed Turtles in Singapore – in large tanks, millions of them. After an advertisement asking for people who wanted to trade, Dennis created a group called the Turtle Traders. They would trade with a defined set of rules, and came from pretty much any background.
This did leave me curious and I wanted to figure out who this Richard Dennis was and Why does Turtle Trading worked. While there was a lot of information available on these topics [a google search will lead you to more content than we talk about in a single post], the one that I stumbled upon happened to have been written on October 6, 2010 [gold stuff that I don’t mind reading again now 7 years later] authored by none other than Deepak Shenoy himself as part of this regular opinions posts on Yahoo.
Read here: The Legend of the Turtles
Here is one rule that I have applied to my portfolio just after reading through all the content I could get my hands on [I am still in the first chapter of the book]related to Richard Dennis and Turtle Traders – never invest more than 2% of your capital in a single stock/ commodity – which thereby ensures your portfolio has a diverse exposure to various sectors.
This is one of the original ads Richard Dennis used to recruit the Turtles.
For now, we just wanted to pass on the latest podcasts and interviews that we have come across on Turtle Traders:
Trend Following: 492: TurtleTrader Plus Lemmy with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio
Chat With Traders: EP 067: The Turtle Traders story, following major trends, and managing investors’ money w/ Jerry Parker
Better System Trader: 017: Jerry Parker, CTA, from the Turtles trading group shares 30+ years of trading experience
Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Michael Covel
The Incredible True Story of the Real Life ’Trading Places’
The turtle story is about how its beneficial to trade with the trend. Ride the Winners, Cut out the losers is the moral of the story. The Trend is Our Friend, stay with it.
Recommended Readings
- The Original Turtle Trading Rules
- The Complete TurtleTrader: How 23 Novice Investors Became Overnight Millionaires
- Trend Following (Updated Edition): Learn to Make Millions in Up or Down Markets
Hope you have fun reading
