Turtle Jerry Parker noted the other day in Chicago that his trading is 100% systematic. Not news to me or the many others familiar with trend trading, but I suspect for people not familiar with trend following that fact takes time to digest. Parker also noted how bad of a thing it was for the Turtles to make money the wrong way. He said that if they made money the wrong way they were in trouble with Richard Dennis.
Author: Michael Covel
Author of Trend Following and TurtleTrader.
The Same Turtle Principles
Yesterday’s Turtle panel in Chicago yielded expected results: all of the Turtles adhere to long term trend following techniques rooted in those original Turtle lessons from so many decades ago. Many said they sill use the money management guides as taught. I still need to get the exact phrasing, but Turtle Paul Rabar had a fantastic statement on why trends and trend following persists as a great money-making strategy. What separates some Turtles from others? I go into this subject in chapter 11 of my book “The Complete TurtleTrader”, but this quote from Jim Rogers gets to the point:
“Most of us don’t have the discipline to stay focused on a single goal for five, ten, or twenty years, giving up everything to bring it off, but that’s what’s necessary to become an Olympic champion, a world class surgeon, or a Kirov ballerina. Even then, of course, it may be all in vain. You may make a single mistake that wipes out all the work. It may ruin the sweet, lovable self you were at seventeen. That old adage is true: You can do anything in life, you just can’t do everything. That’s what Bacon meant when he said a wife and children were hostages to fortune. If you put them first, you probably won’t run the three-and-a-half-minute-mile, make your first $10 million, write the great American novel, or go around the world on a motorcycle. Such goals take complete dedication.”
-Jim Rogers
Rich Dennis and Four TurtleTraders Today in Chicago
For the first time publicly today Richard Dennis appeared on stage with four of his Turtle students. Joining him were Jerry Parker, Liz Cheval, Tom Shanks and Paul Rabar. The room was packed so I may have missed other Turtles in the audience, but Brian Proctor (Turtle) was sitting behind me.
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Trend Following is for beginners, students and pros in all countries. This is not day trading 5-minute bars, prediction or analyzing fundamentals–it’s Trend Following.Millionaires
Rich Dennis Raw MidAm Exchange Feedback
From a reader:
Mr. Covel, I picked up a copy of your “The Complete TurtleTrader” and finished it in one sitting. Very nice book and you did a very thorough job in your research. Your book is an improvement over […]’s book. You did a nice and quick explanation of N, which […] failed to do in his seminars. I was thoroughly impressed when you mentioned Lucy Wyatt. Not too many people know of her involvement in the early stages of the Eckhardt-Dennis school of thought…You brought up a lot of names from the MidAmerica Days. The person who was instrumental in Dennis’ (PDF) growth was a trader at the MidAm by the name of Harold Greenberg. Harold was a trend trader and it was he who always took out the positions that Dennis, Willis, Ware, and others who were panicked into selling. Harold would just go into the pit, and buy anything these boys sold to him, as long as it was a bull market. I always get a kick out of what Harold use to tell everyone: “I’ve been trading for over 30 years and I’ve been broke 29 of those years!” I would like to buy a copy of your book, autographed to me, “[…],” and whatever you can think of inscribing. How do I go about it? Thanks in advance. William […]
More.
How can you move forward immediately to Trend Following profits? My books and my Flagship Course and Systems are trusted options by clients in 70+ countries.
Also jump in:
• Trend Following Podcast Guests
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Performance
• Research
• Markets to Trade
• Crisis Times
• Trading Technology
• About Us
Trend Following is for beginners, students and pros in all countries. This is not day trading 5-minute bars, prediction or analyzing fundamentals–it’s Trend Following.
Paul Tudor Jones II on the “Tape”
Paul Tudor Jones thinks smartly. An example:
When trading macro, you never have a complete information set or information edge the way analysts can have when trading individual securities. It’s a hell of a lot easier to get an information edge on one stock than it is on the S&P 500. When it comes to trading macro, you cannot rely solely on fundamentals; you have to be a tape reader, which is something of a lost art form. The inability to read a tape and spot trends is also why so many in the relative-value space who rely solely on fundamentals have been annihilated in the past decade. Markets have consistently experienced ‘100-year events’ every five years. While I spend a significant amount of my time on analytics and collecting fundamental information, at the end of the day, I am a slave to the tape and proud of it.
He adds:
I see the younger generation hampered by the need to understand and rationalize why something should go up or down. Usually, by the time that becomes self-evident, the move is already over. When I got into the business, there was so little information on fundamentals, and what little information one could get was largely imperfect. We learned just to go with the chart. Why work when Mr. Market can do it for you? These days, there are many more deep intellectuals in the business, and that, coupled with the explosion of information on the Internet, creates the illusion that there is an explanation for everything and that the primary task is simply to find that explanation. As a result, technical analysis is at the bottom of the study list for many of the younger generation, particularly since the skill often requires them to close their eyes and trust the price action. The pain of gain is just too overwhelming for all of us to bear!
Why trend following trading has never made the cover of at least one magazine is beyond me.
How can you move forward immediately to Trend Following profits? My books and my Flagship Course and Systems are trusted options by clients in 70+ countries.
Also jump in:
• Trend Following Podcast Guests
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Performance
• Research
• Markets to Trade
• Crisis Times
• Trading Technology
• About Us
Trend Following is for beginners, students and pros in all countries. This is not day trading 5-minute bars, prediction or analyzing fundamentals–it’s Trend Following.
“Broke” Film Posters
I have had one poster for “Broke: The New American Dream” out for several months. Here are more:
Poster 1: low res and high res.
Poster 2: low res and high res.
Poster 3: low res and high res.
Poster 4: low res and high res.
Poster 5: low res and high res.
Poster 6: low res and high res.
Poster 7: low res and high res.
Poster 8: low res and high res.
These posters all have different top level quotations. I left the Hunter S. Thompson quotation in with the f-bomb, but I also included a sanitized version of it. If you want to review them download the low-res versions first. If you want to print a full color movie poster size use the high-res versions (13.9MG). Film packaging is underway and I hope to have the film available by month end!
Trend Followers in the Wall Street Journal
If you wanted to judge Bill Dunn or David Harding it makes much more sense to judge success or failure after looking at their month by month track records across decades over any randomly selected 3-month performance window. For example: “Computer-Trading Models Meet Match “.
If link doesn’t work article here too.