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Curtis Faith: A Failed Turtle with Many Controversies

(March 15, 2009)

Curtis Faith Failed Turtle Trader
Curtis Faith

Curtis Faith: A Failed Turtle

The true story of Curtis Faith is not easily learned, but careful research has revealed a portrait of anything but success. Through multiple government documents, a Faith family member, other Turtles, performance records, direct interviews with Faith's former business associates, a former employee and Faith's own words - a true picture of Curtis Faith has come into view.

For example, Faith holds himself out as the most successful Turtle. The publishing house McGraw-Hill (along with editor Jeanne Glasser) holds Faith out as the most successful Turtle. However, Faith and McGraw-Hill and Jeanne Glasser are inaccurate. In fact, research shows Curtis Faith could be the least successful (by a wide margin) of the Turtle students hired by Richard Dennis. Faith has no public trading track record for the last 20 years (except for his firm Acceleration Capital which imploded; see below). However, a lack of trading success for over 20 years has not stopped Faith from promoting himself as supposedly making $31.5 million 20+ years ago for Richard Dennis. However, the only source for the $31.5 million is Faith's "word". By comparison other Turtle performance numbers, month by month, do exist (see p. 203-226 of "The Complete TurtleTrader"). The controversies with Faith all start with the Turtles. An excerpt from the book "The Complete TurtleTrader":

[Turtle Jim] DiMaria, who was only eighteen months older than [Curtis] Faith, saw everyone playing by the rules during the program except Faith. He said, "That would go to position sizing, markets traded...he was the special boy wonder. So he could do things that the rest of us couldn't. He probably doesn't realize that. Did he have special rules ahead of the game, or did he change the game and then ask if those new rules were okay?"...[Turtle] Mike Shannon connected the dots in very human terms: "Curt Faith, on the other hand, was driven by his father. His father was a Jehovah's Witness and he had to pay a tithing to the church. It was like his dad was a stage mom almost...[He] would come up and we'd look at this guy and some of their beliefs are just a little bit off the wall." Now, Mike Shannon was no angel, but his words revealed a real-world picture of the goings-on in the office. The bottom line: Given the millions Faith was trading, given the clear allocation discrepancies, given the clear discontent, this drama over allocations and extra assistance was just as much a part of being a Turtle as the rules they were taught. Shannon was sympathetic when he described the situation: "[Curtis] made no secret of it. Look, he wasn't running around giving us copies of [Jehovah's Witness brochures] or anything bizarre like that...He was pretty upfront about it. He would say, "The church I belong to and blah, blah, blah and all that." Perhaps Richard Dennis had become a father figure for the young Faith. Shannon added, "Rich really like Curt a lot."

Curtis Faith controversies have continued long after the Turtle experiment.

2006-2007 CFTC Investigation

The following two depositions describe how Curtis Faith's money management firm Acceleration Capital imploded: Deposition One and Deposition Two. Curtis Faith's then partner Plyam explains how he and Faith met, what type of trading system they used, the ownership breakdown of Acceleration Capital, Faith's background, the management fees, how much they put up to start Acceleration Capital and Faith's subsequent disappearance. Perhaps most alarming, a male employee was stealing money from Acceleration Capital to buy trips, buy cars, to pay for a gastric bypass surgery, to buy gifts for his boyfriend and to buy barbie dolls on eBay.

Curtis Faith Controversies

The only objective accounting regarding Curtis Faith is found in "The Complete TurtleTrader" (Chapter 12 and Afterword of paperback edition). Consider video from Michael Covel:


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