The Turtles was a group of inexperienced traders that answered a newspaper ad in Chicago in the 80’s.  The group was formed to settle a debate that Richard Dennis, a multi-millionaire commodities trader, made with a friend and fellow trader named William Eckhardt.

Dennis believed that successful trading was not an innate skill special people possessed, but could be taught. So, to settle the debate, he recruited and trained 21 men and 2 women, in two groups, one from December 1983, and the other from December 1984.

He trained them for only two weeks to use a simple set of rules in a trend-following system.  They used this system to trade commodities, currencies, and bonds.

Once they were trained they were given $1,000,000 trading accounts.  As a group they earned an annual return of 80% and an aggregate profit of $100,000,000.

Their success is legend at this point.  And they helped Richard Dennis become one of the most famous commodity traders of all time.

And I am often reminded of Robert Ringer, entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker, who portrays himself as the tortoise in his great book Looking Out For Number One.

To your health and prosperity – John

P.S. You can read the original Turtle Trading rules at this link.  They are free.  http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/files/turtlerules.pdf.

And to learn more about Richard Dennis, there is an excellent article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dennis.