Turtle Trading Strategy

The Turtle Trading Strategy originated with commodity trader Richard Dennis. In conversations with his partner, William Eckhardt, Dennis contested that beginning traders could be trained to trade well by following a set of rules.

A similar story is told in “Trading Places” with Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd. Dennis taught his rules to classes of students, or “turtles.” The students were so named because Dennis claimed he was going to grow traders they way they grew turtles in Singapore. The turtle trading strategy itself is fairly straightforward. The idea is to follow market trends. For instance, purchasing futures on a 30-day high and selling on a 15-day low. Other basic rules include information on planning your entry and your exit, experimenting with your exit and entry parameters to find what works best for you, not risking more than a small percentage of your account on any one trade, and looking at prices yourself rather than relying on media sources to inform your trading decisions.

The exact parameters are under copyright, but books have been written about the rules themselves.