The Complete TurtleTrader: The Legend, the Lessons, the Results

The Complete TurtleTrader Book Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Covel (Trend Following) revisits a famous financial trading experiment conducted by Wall Street trader Richard Dennis and extracts its lessons with mixed results. Dennis, who quickly learned how to trade after starting as a runner at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1966 at age 17, had made a reported $200 million by 1983. To settle an argument with fellow trader William Eckhardt about whether trading ability was innate or could be taught, he put an ad in the Wall Street Journal offering to teach candidates how to trade in two weeks, and then backed them with his own money. Of the thousands of people who who applied, 23 turtles were accepted. Their trading made $100 million for Dennis, leading some to become highly successful traders in their own right. Having tracked down most of the people involved, Covel describes the turtle training, including rules for entering and exiting trades as well as Dennis and Eckhardt's personal lessons, and speculates on why some turtles succeeded more than others. However, there are too many characters with competing interests, and many missing facts. Covel's own strong views can also get more emphasis than the voices of the principals. Still, the book is a useful training manual distilling the lessons of a fascinating experiment. (Oct.)
"Tells the ‘real stories’ rather than just the glossy good bits—a thoroughly good read." -- Your Trading Edge"This warmly written book brilliantly captures the formation and evolution of the legendary Turtle investment program. It is loaded with wonderful anecdotal insights plus lessons on trading, risk, and life we should all follow. It should be on any novice or seasoned trader’s bookshelf alike. A must read!" -- Michael Shannon, Original Turtle"If you want to beat the market, you have to do something different from what everyone else is doing, and you have to be right. In this fascinating and instructive book, Michael Covel tells how a group of novice traders used a system that generated trades that were both different and right, and which made them a lot of money. If you want to understand the real world of trading, read this book." -- Bill Miller, Legg Mason Capital Management, Summer 2007"Turtle Trader is a story. It's a beach-chair page-turner loaded with interesting, even offbeat, characters and, a fair dose of drama. It's part Chicago historical account and sociology text." -- SFO Magazine, September 2007Covel so clearly lays out [the] ingredients of success, his book is relevant ... to anyone who aspires to greatness in the markets. -- Brett Steenbarger, author of The Psychology of Trading and Enhancing Trading PerformanceMost beat-the-market books aren't worth my shelf space. This one is. -- BloombergTells the ‘real stories’ rather than just the glossy good bits - a thoroughly good read. -- Your Trading Edge

From the Author

This is the story of how a group of rag tag students, many with no Wall Street experience, were trained to be millionaire traders. Think of Donald Trump's show "The Apprentice," played out in the real world with real money and real hiring and firing. However, these apprentices were thrown into the fire and challenged to make money almost immediately with millions at stake. They weren't trying to sell ice cream on the streets of New York City. They were trading stocks, bonds, currencies, oil and dozens of other markets to make millions. This story blows the roof off the conventional Wall Street success image so carefully crafted in popular culture: prestige, connections and no place at the table for the little guy to beat the market and beating the market is no small task. Legendary investor Benjamin Graham always said that analysts and fund managers as a whole could not beat the market because in a significant sense they were the market. On top of that, the academic community has argued for decades about efficient markets, once again implying there is no way to beat the market averages. Yet making big money, beating the market, is doable if you don't follow the herd, if you think outside the box. Anyone does have a chance to win in the market game, but he or she needs the right rules and attitude to play by. And those right rules and attitude collide against basic human nature.

I couldn't put this book down. Excellent research combined with detailed facts
In The Complete TurtleTraders, author Michael W. Covel tells the riveting account of a group of investors who were led by one remarkable man, Richard Dennis (with the help of his partner, William Eckhardt). Dennis was somewhat of an iconoclast, not brought up through the ranks of Fortune 500 company grooming programs, figuring out his own methods for making money.

Dennis was a successful investor who believed that investing
principles could be taught to anyone. His partner, William Eckhardt, disagreed, tending to believe that the talent was inborn. Their differing views formed the basis for a bet between the two men and led to one of the more remarkable experiments in investing history.

Basically, Dennis agreed to find a diverse group of individuals, give each recruit $1 million dollars, put them through two weeks of intensive training, teach them specific investing principles and methods and see how well they'd do after that. To add to the challenge, Dennis and his partner (who agreed to help teach the recruits) hired people from all walks of life.

Exactly how diverse was the group? Well, there was a security guard, a restaurant manger, an unemployed student, a bartender, kitchen cook, teacher and even a prison worker. Covel describes in detail how Dennis

interviewed and selected each recruit, nicknaming them "The Turtles". He also chronicles their 14 days of intensive training. It wasn't easy but the potential rewards were great.

While the account of the Turtles' experiences is reason enough to buy this book, I want to stress that it is more than the story of that remarkable group of individuals. It is also the profile of Richard Dennis, his background and his own conflicting feelings as the experiment
concluded and a second generation of Turtles came along. At times, it is hard to wonder if the Turtles succeeded too well, leading to mixed feelings in Richard Dennis as some of them surpassed him.

Covel also updates readers about some of the Turtles today. The book is so full of investing principles, guidelines and rules that I don't know how anyone with an interest in learning more about investing, trading or finances could pass this one up!

Pulling Back the Veil
The first impression one gets from The Complete Turtle Trader is quite favorable. It is an attractive format, and a pretty easy read, though well written and detailed. The primary text is about 200 pages, which I got through in a single afternoon (though I do read faster than most). And the price tag is extremely reasonable for a hardcover trading book, much lower than what you often see.

This book definitely continues along the path of the trend trading subject of Covel's earlier book, Trend Following, but does so through the story of the famous Turtles. Readers of Jack Schwager's book, Market Wizards, and it's follow-up, The New Market Wizards, will be familiar with the Turtles. They are the result of a nature vs. nurture running debate between famous futures trader Richard Dennis (a Market Wizard) and his partner William Eckhardt (profiled in The New Market Wizards).

The Turtle program was an effort to determine whether traders can be created, developed through training as opposed to having some innate talent for it. This topic has been the subject of debates in trading circles for probably as long as there has been traders. To a certain degree, the classic movie Trading Places, which was released very near the time of the first Turtle program, has at it's core the same theme.

In The Complete Turtle Trader, as the subtitle suggests, Covel tells the story of the Turtles from the selection process which brought together two very diverse groups of people in 1983 and 1984 all the way through to where they are today. It includes a discussion of their training program, their performance, and of course the ideas underlying the system they employed, one based on trend following. The explanation of the latter is pretty direct - definitely enough to give the reader a really good idea of the way the Turtles were taught to trade, which they did very successfully. Figures to that end are provided throughout the text and in supporting appendices. The author also includes comments on how individual traders can apply the Turtle techniques and philosophy themself.

For someone like myself, who first heard about the Turtles through Schwager's writings, this book was a really interesting back-filling of the story. When Schwager was putting his books together, the Turtles and their instructors were very tight-lipped about the details of the experience. In this book, Covel has been able to flesh things out, not just in a kind of history text sort of exposition, but one which includes a great many comments and annecdotes from the participants. It is a tale which really explores the whole perspective of life as a Turtle.

The story Covel lays out offers a great many insights. Obviously, the first one is that learning how to trade, and to make big returns, is possible. Probably the most interesting part of the narrative, though, (in terms of the story, anyway) is what happened to the Turtles after they left the program. It will come as no surprise that the diversity of their backgrounds and personalities has been reflected in the diversity of what they have done over the intervening years. I was particularly enthralled by the discussion of the adjustments they had to make to be successful as big-time money managers, something their mentor Dennis was never quite able to do.

Overall I consider The Complete Turtle Trader a very enjoyable and worthwhile read. It has a lot of elements, and of course trading strategy. I actually found reinforcement of many of my own trading ideas as I was reading, seeing them in a different light. That's not something which happens much after twenty years of trading and reading books and articles on the subject. Of course not everyone is going to find the fullness of the theory or application behind Turtle trading suitable to them, but it is always worth making an effort to learn from those who have achieved success before us, and that's an opportunity this book provides.

Trading Discipline Taught by a Master
"Are great traders born or can they be taught?"

This is a question that countless thousands of hours have been squandered pondering. Thanks to Michael W. Covel it is now rendered moot. Great traders can be taught. And having learned the lessons, they can pass the secrets on to others.

Richard J. Dennis, a trading impresario of the Chicago pits in the '70s and '80s, believed anyone with the right training could do it. To prove his point, he and his partner recruited, trained and backed his apprentices with $1 million dollars a piece.

"We are going to grow traders just like they grow turtles in Singapore," Dennis said after seeing a breeding farm there.

In the beginning the Turtles had little in common, other than smarts and the ability to recognize and seize an opportunity. By the time the experiment was over, they had made their employer more than $100 million.

Covel does a masterful job explaining the system. The rules are simple. The discipline and preparation required to implement them is not. They are detailed in two short chapters.

I have never read a "beat the market book." I am too much of a cynic. This book is different. Covel breathes life into the Turtles. His narrative describes their triumphs, frustrations, jealousies and doubts these trading masters experienced. It paints a vivid picture of the trading life and the system that made them so successful.

Author Biography

Michael Covel passionately teaches the lessons of the great traders who have made their fortunes over the last four decades. Forget Buy and Hold and CNBC; those are not Michael's game. His subject of choice is an obscure trading style called 'trend following trading' that has produced untold millionaires and a few billionaires. It is a style of trading ignored by the mainstream press, all universities and much of Wall Street. Michael is now considered the point person on trend following trading.

In 1996 Michael co-launched a website titled TurtleTrader.

Table of Contents

Preface xi
Acknowledgments xvii

1 Nurture versus Nature: page 1
2 Prince of the Pit: page 9
3 The Turtles: page 29
4 The Philosophy: page 51
5 The Rules: page 67
6 In the Womb: page 99
7 Who Got What to Trade: page 113
8 Game Over: page 129
9 Out on Their Own: page 135
10 Dennis Comes Back to the Game: page 145
11 Seizing Opportunity: page 153
12 Failure Is a Choice: page 167
13 Second-Generation Turtles: page 173
14 Model Greatness: page 187

Afterword: page 191
Appendix I: page 209
Appendix II: page 215
Appendix III: page 217
Appendix IV: page 221
Endnotes: page 245
Index: page 257
About the Author: page 267

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