When asked about trend following becoming “overpopulated” a Richard Dennis quote is often best:
“I don’t think trading strategies are as vulnerable to not working if people know about them, as most traders believe. If what you are doing is right, it will work even if people have a general idea about it. I always say you could publish rules in a newspaper and no one would follow them. The key is consistency and discipline.”
Psychology and following the rules are paramount–bottom line. Consider more from an excerpt from The Complete Turtle Trader:
The techniques that Dennis and Eckhardt taught the Turtles were different from Dennis’s seasonal spread techniques from his early floor days. The Turtles were trained to be trend-following traders. In a nutshell, that meant that they needed a “trend” to make money. Trend followers always wait for a market to move; then they follow it. Capturing the majority of a trend, up or down, for profit is the goal.
The Turtles were trained this way because by 1983, Dennis knew the things that worked best were “rules”: “The majority of the other things that didn’t work were judgments. It seemed that the better part of the whole thing was rules. You can’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘I want to have an intuition about a market.’ You’re going to have way too many judgments.”
While Dennis knew exactly where the sweet spot was for making big money, he often fumbled his own trading with too many discretionary judgments. Looking back, he blamed his pit experience, saying, “People trading in the pit are very bad systems traders generally. They learn different things. They react to the [price] ‘tick’ in your face.”
Feedback from a listener that addresses Richard Dennis:
Hi Michael,
Hope you are doing well. Again, I appreciate everything, specially your commitment to the trend following podcast. In a recent back to back [other podcast] between [name] and [name] they address an important question:
—
Q: What lessons do you take from the fall of Richard Dennis? One of the biggest swingers at the Board of Trade…great trader…not only that but he believed he could replicate trading skills and did so successfully. He trained a whole generation of people who came up [and] manged billions…and then he basically goes and explodes. What is the practical lesson for your audience here?
A: Speaking to the trend following school in particular (and various trend followers who blew up or bled out): I do believe that certain trading styles and methodologies can suffer greatly from overpopularity. When there are too many people following a widespread strategy, and not enough differentiation among that active group, the strategy can be degraded to the point of no longer working.
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Personally, I don´t agree with that argument because market trends have been persistent over time. As Howard Marks said: “We don´t have to worry about everybody becoming to prudent or to wise, because we are talking about human nature.”
I would appreciate your insight on this argument.
Peace,
[Name]
I don’t see any argument. My views on this are answered across 2 books comprehensively (the question above has some inaccuracies for starters):
1: The Complete TurtleTrader
2: Trend Following
My best response is in about 180,000 combined words (that is not a dodge; reality is that my answer is long). And yes I talk about the good and bad of Richard Dennis, but the good far outweighed the bad.
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