Product Description

Richard Dennis, "the Prince of the Pits," a man who'd already made a fortune on the Street, was convinced that great trading wasn't a gift from God, but something that could be taught to anyone. So one day he made a bet with his partner, and ran a classified ad in the "Wall Street Journal" looking for trainees. And he didn't just hire finance professionals: his trainees - who became known as the "Turtles" - included an actor, a security guard, two professional blackjack players, a pianist, a fantasy game designer, and others. After two weeks of training, he set them loose, with a $1 million bankroll each to invest as they chose, and the right to keep a share of their trading gains for themselves, as long they adhered to the Turtle system. By the time the program ended, Dennis and his partner had made over $120 million - from trades made by complete novices. Many of these Turtles then went on to trade for themselves, and some are among the top investors operating today.As fascinating as Dannis and the Turtles' story is, Covel doesn't stop there. He lays out, in detail, the exact system the Turtles used to reap their millions. And because the Turtle system is a form of so-called technical investing, meaning the Turtles weren't concerned about the fundamentals of the investments they made, it is an investing strategy where a Wall Street operator, plugged into the second-by-second madness of finance, has no advantage over an ordinary investor. And Covel takes us step-by-step through all the details needed to apply this at home. In "Turtletrader", Michael W. Covel, author of "Trend Following" and Managing Editor of "TurtleTrader.com", tells the riveting story of the Turtles, their selection, their training, how they made (and lost) astounding fortunes, and certainly not least, the tools readers will need to start trading like Turtles themselves.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #138769 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

A really bad book!!
This book is really not what I expected. I have read almost every trading related book that exists, and this is probably the worst. A trading book can succeed on 2 main levels:

1. It can be funny and entertaining.
2. It can be informative about trading.

If you are looking for 1, look at "liars poker", "when genius failed", "bombardiers"

If you are looking for a good trading book, there are many out there.

This book can never compete with "Way of the turtle" by Curtis Faith. He doesnt so much focus on "the story", which is only so interesting anyway, but he does write what is perhaps the best introductory text on systems trading that has ever been written. In addition, he really gets across the essence of why the turtles were successful: Having faith in a thoroughly backtested system.

In short, this book is thoroughly boring, uninformative, disorganised (it has no clear structure) and generally awful.

One of the most successful wagers in investment history
The tale of the turtles must be one of the most interesting, and materially successful, wagers in the history of investment.

Richard Dennis, an iconoclastic, wildcatting, independent Chicago trader, had by 1983 made hundreds of millions of dollars from an initial grubstake of just a few hundred.

Dennis made that fortune on his own terms, in less than 15 years, with no formal training or guidance from anyone. He took calculated risks leveraging up huge amounts of money.

In late 1983 Dennis bet his then partner Bill Eckhardt that he could teach beginners with no experience how to trade to make millions in the same way that he had. His partner responded that great traders were born, not bred. The two men decided to find out who was right. They hired and trained students, nicknamed "Turtles" after Dennis visited a turtle breeding farm, and gave them some simple rules to follow.

In essence, Dennis taught trend following: cutting your losses, and letting your winners run. This may sound easy, but it's a strategy that runs counter to basic human psychology. The turtles managed to make it work by implementing a rigid, rules-based approach for sizing, entering and exiting trades. And the results were - and are - spectacular. As examples of funds managed by successful turtles, Chesapeake Capital-Diversified Fund, with assets of over $1.5bn, had delivered at the time of writing total returns of over 1,400%. EMC Capital Management-Classic, with a longer track record, has delivered total returns of over 16,000%.

For those interested in the topic of trend-following - a more mechanistic and objective style of trading favoured by many hedge funds, as opposed to the largely discretionary management favoured by traditional long-only managers, Michael Covel's latest book is a must-read.

good bed-side read
Not too boring historical prospective suitable for a bed-side table and hassle-free reading by experienced traders

Obviously, this is not a text book to learn how to trade.

I gave it 4 stars because there are better books of the same kind such as Market Wizards, etc