preface
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1.
Richard Dennis' Experiment: Is Trading Ability Innate or Learned?
Chapter 2.
The Prince of the Exchange ~ The Rise of a Genius Trader Who Became a Billionaire in an Instant
Chapter 3.
Turtle Trainees ~ Security Guards, Immigrants, Game Developers… They're Becoming Traders?
Chapter 4.
Investment Philosophy: If you want to trade successfully, follow the rules.
Chapter 5.
Trading Rules ~ Learn and Apply Entry and Liquidation Rules
Chapter 6.
Embryonic Problems ~ Who is the Real Turtle?
Chapter 7.
Discrimination in distribution amounts ~ Conflicts caused by opaque distribution of investment funds
Chapter 8.
Game Stopped ~ Sudden Experimental Halt and Retirement of Legendary Investor
Chapter 9.
Each Goes His Own Way ~Turtle Becomes Wall Street's New Star
Chapter 10.
The Return of Richard Dennis: The Disciples Who Advance and the King's Shabby Return
Chapter 11.
Seize the Opportunity ~ The Difference Between a Successful Turtle and a Failed Turtle
Chapter 12.
Failure is also a result of my choices ~ The possibility of transferring trading techniques is a separate issue.
Chapter 13.
The Rise of the Second Generation Turtles ~ Another Legend That Surpasses the Original Turtles
Chapter 14.
A Great Example ~ Innate Talent Alone Is Never Enough

Conclusion
Appendix 1 Where are the turtles and what are they doing?
Appendix 2 Related Websites
Appendix 3 Annual Performance of Turtles
Appendix 4: Turtles' operational performance during the training period (1984-1988)
About the author
annotation

“There are some people who trade well without being emotionally involved with money.

But I've never seen anyone do it as well as Richard Dennis."
-Robert Morse

Turtle Trading: The 14-Day Experiment That Rocked Wall Street
The secret door opens!

One day in 1994, Michael Covell came across a magazine listing the "100 Highest-Paid Wall Streeters of 1993."
George Soros was first, and Julian Robertson, who earned $500 million, was second.
Among the stellar investors, there was an unfamiliar name on the list who earned $35 million.
It was Jerry Parker Jr.
He was not yet forty at the time, and his resume stated that he was a 'disciple of Richard Dennis and a Turtle practitioner.'
It was also stated that he was a 25-year-old accountant when he began learning 'trend following techniques' from Richard Dennis in 1983.
The author, intrigued by the fact that he had made a name for himself among Wall Street professionals despite being young and having no significant career experience, begins to pursue the 'Turtle Story'.


Richard Dennis, who became a billionaire in his 30s
William Eckhardt, who runs a multi-billion dollar hedge fund,
Who taught Turtle?

Richard Dennis started with a few hundred dollars and by the age of thirty-seven had already made hundreds of millions of dollars.
He earned $80 million in 1986 alone, tying George Soros, who earned $100 million that year, and Michael Milken, who earned $80 million.
His style of making money was to strike out several times and then hit a grand slam.
I used mathematical techniques to calculate risk without being swayed by small losses or emotional ups and downs, and used a trading technique that leveraged investments.
His trading style is a trend-following strategy.
This strategy was completely contrary to the thinking of value investors such as Warren Buffett.
In other words, rather than buying undervalued stocks and selling them when the price rises, they bought them when the price broke the all-time high and sold them after the price rose further.
The press was more interested in the size of his fortune than in his trading techniques, and he paid little attention to the press's behavior.
From then on, he believed that anyone could learn trading techniques if they studied properly.


His school friend and colleague, William Eckhart, thought differently.
He was a mathematician who studied mathematics and mathematical logic, and believed that training ability was innate.
After some debate, they opened two trading classes in 1983 and 1984, then used newspaper ads to recruit prospective students to conduct an experiment to see whose ideas were right.


Are great traders born or trained?
Decided after a two-week investment class!

Teaching Dennis and Eckhart's investment philosophy and trading rules to these Turtle students—who were complete novices at investing, including security guards, bartenders, gamblers, salesmen, pianists, Air Force officers, and game designers—was like teaching someone who had never flown an airplane before to master the art of flying in two weeks.
They wanted Turtle students to think of trading not in terms of money, but as just one variable.
This way, you can always make the right trading decisions, regardless of the size of your operation.
One Turtle practitioner expressed awe at Richard Dennis's ability to execute such deals, even when "people were going dumb, deaf and broke."
Many people don't worry much about losses when trading small amounts.
However, as trade sizes double, trading decisions become more important and difficult.
When you trade 'a lot', you are reminded of the amount of profit and loss, making it more difficult to maintain composure.
The idea that money and trading should be separated was deeply ingrained in Turtle students.


The first-ever chart of the actual investment returns of the original Turtles has been revealed!

The results of trading after two weeks of training were amazing.
Most Turtle students with no investment experience have shown returns of over 100 percent every year.
Starting with an investment of $1 million each, by the end of the experiment, the Turtle trainees had earned Richard Dennis hundreds of millions of dollars.
This book is the first to disclose the actual performance of the Turtles during the period (1984-1987) when they managed funds for Richard Dennis (Appendix 4).


Howard Seidler: 15.91% in 1984, 100.16% in 1985, 95.98% in 1986, and 79.52% in 1987.
Jerry Parker: -10.04% in 1984, 128.87% in 1985, 124.74% in 1986, 36.78% in 1987
Jim DiMaria: 71.12% in 1985, 131.68% in 1986, and 96.74% in 1987
Philippe Lu: 132.25% in 1985, 128.8% in 1986, and 77.58% in 1987.
Paul LaBar: 91.72% in 1985, 125.86% in 1986, and 78.19% in 1987.

Detailed information on the trading techniques Richard Dennis taught his Turtle students can be found in Chapter 5, Trading Rules.
The author presents charts and diagrams of actual purchases, liquidations, and portfolio compositions, obtained through interviews with turtles and extensive research.
By introducing trading rules and demonstrating the timing of when Turtle Traders actually bought and sold various futures, you can experience their investment principles firsthand.


What happened to the turtle traders after the experiment?

This book is largely divided into two parts.
The first part covers the Turtle Experiment, which was conducted in an experimental setting prepared by Richard Dennis, from its inception to its investment philosophy, techniques, conflicts, and dissolution.
As the turtles showed in their results, this experiment proved that trading is not something you are born with, but something anyone can learn to become good at.
The author draws stories from various people, including the original turtles, and describes in detail not only the experimental process but also the turtles' subsequent actions.
It depicts the process each turtle goes through after the turtle experiment as they face reality and the human instincts that intervene outside of the rules.
As the turtles left the experiment and went their separate ways, some succeeded, while others failed.


It also contains the story of the second-generation turtles who met the original turtles and transformed into investors.
The fact that there are second-generation Turtles who have no direct connection to Richard Dennis or William Eckhardt, but who have made huge amounts of money using their trading methods, is a powerful argument that trading ability is not innate but can be taught and learned.
If there were a second generation turtle, wouldn't anyone who learned this method be able to become a turtle?

William Eckhardt continues to have exceptional trading performance to this day.
In the long run, he made more money than Richard Dennis.
William Eckhardt and Jerry Parker and Paul LaBar, both Tuttle alumni, manage over $3 billion.
They are still trading in a very similar way to the Turtle Experiment.
Even in the first quarter of 2008, when the stock market was in great turmoil following the Lehman Brothers crisis, they achieved the following results:

William Eckhart: +14 percent
Jerry Parker: +11 percent
Liz Chevel: +17 percent
Tom Shanks: +37 percent
Paul Lava: +13 percent
Howard Seidler: +28 percent
Salem Abraham: +13 percent