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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

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.

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.

For those who still want to argue that the success of Richard Dennis and the success of some Turtles was “nature” over “nurture” you may want to take a read of “Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.” The book’s conclusion is the exact same conclusion I wrote about in my last chapter of “The Complete TurtleTrader”: the dividing line for greatness is deliberate practice, not talent. The Turtles were absolutely an example of nurture trumping nature. And for the ones who have endured their long term success is all about their hard work.