Turtle Trading is Trend Following: Learn the Pros, Cons and Myths

This website was named TurtleTrader and the phrase "turtle trading" was coined because it described a great story about how a group of non-traders were taught to trade for big profits. Some of these original TurtleTraders have continued to be successful while others have failed in grand fashion. Jack Schwager's Market Wizards books originally positioned these traders as winners all, but secretive and reluctant to share their so-called "secrets" with the world.

Today, TurtleTrader remains the ONLY independent voice on this subject -- revealing the pros, cons and myths.

The following 4 books and online interview paint a true picture of the Turtles -- fact and fiction:
The Complete TurtleTrader (Collins, October 2007).
The Market Wizards
The New Market Wizards
Trend Following:How Great Traders Make Millions in Up or Down Markets

Richard Dennis (and the Turtles)
In 1984, Richard Dennis taught a Trend Following trading methodology to a group of students (neophyte non-traders) in a two-week seminar. Dennis' motivation for conducting the sessions was to settle a dispute with his friend and business partner William Eckhardt over whether trading skills could be taught. Dennis strongly believed that trading abilities could be broken down into a set of rules that could be passed on to others. Eckhardt believed trading abilities had more to do with innate instincts. Eckhardt lost the bet with Dennis. Dennis nicknamed his proteges Turtles after visiting turtle farms in Singapore and deciding to develop traders like farm-grown turtles.

The Turtle Selection Process
What questions were used to select students? Read true-false questions used in selection process.
However, the Turtle hype, over the years, has grown larger than reality. Dennis and the Turtles were always trend followers. No matter how "secretive" they acted, they were just good trend followers. Interestingly, while some Turtles are still great successes, some are dismal failures (and many of these failures work really hard at pretending to be successes):