Download the Adobe .pdf review of TurtleTrader.

The Forbes review was before site makeover!

NOTE: If you want to learn trend following techniques and systems through advanced home study and or seminars for all traders click here. If you want to learn about trend following trading in general there is one definitive text the bestselling classic "Trend Following: Learn to Make Millions in Up or Down Markets" by Michael Covel. If you want to learn about the most famous group of trained trend following traders, the Turtles and their teacher Richard Dennis, "The Complete TurtleTrader" by Michael Covel is the only complete biography (with all of the Turtle rules) available. If you have any questions you can reach us immediately via phone or email.

All podcasts on TurtleTrader.com can be found here.

NOTE: If you want to learn trend following techniques and systems through advanced home study and or seminars for all traders click here. If you want to learn about trend following trading in general there is one definitive text the bestselling classic "Trend Following: Learn to Make Millions in Up or Down Markets" by Michael Covel. If you want to learn about the most famous group of trained trend following traders, the Turtles and their teacher Richard Dennis, "The Complete TurtleTrader" by Michael Covel is the only complete biography (with all of the Turtle rules) available. If you have any questions you can reach us immediately via phone or email.

Review excerpt:

While TurtleTrader.com is obviously devoted to Trend Following, what makes the method work is not the genius of the website developers, nor the genius of Richard Dennis or other traders identified with Turtle trading. In some ways, the secrecy to which many original Turtles were sworn has confused the issue of Turtle trading, making the methodology seem more clandestine and complex than it really is, while providing an unfortunate platform for less scrupulous promoters to offer the secret of Turtle trading to aspiring, yet unsuspecting, traders. As one of the administrators of TurtleTrader.com suggested in e-mail, all Turtle trading amounts to, in the end, is trend-following. Indeed, there were successful trend-followers long before Richard Dennis and William Eckhardt's Turtle trading experiment, according to that administrator: 'To some degree, we see the question as a continuation of the secrecy hype first revealed in Schwager's books. Great books, indeed, but the secrecy part of Turtles and trend following was misleading...Given that so many other trend-followers were kicking butt at the same time of the Turtles' creation...Turtle trend-following is not a secret. It simply takes proper teaching.' And that is good news for all of us.David Penn, Staff Writer STOCKS & COMMODITIES

Placing Bets in a Volatile World

As you read the article at the above link note the confusing use of the term futures funds. The article should be speaking of trend following ...

Kate Welling runs a well-respected newsletter called Welling@Weeden. One of her writers Peter Deoteris recently reviewed the book Trend Following. We quickly thanked Kate for the review letting her know that ...

Ah, what a nice web site! Lots of impressive words...Simple logic defeats you. If all take your advice on trending, all will equally loose, due to no trending when all think they see the same trend...Warren Buffett has always been right: buy ...

It always amazes me how few people make any money at this game even though successful methods are available. The reason is that MOST PEOPLE AREN'T TRADING TO MAKE MONEY. They think they are, but the fact is they're trying to fulfill some other needs: for excitement, gambling, feeding their ...

Life is unfair: No one can read the TurtleTrader site for long before the statement, Trading is a zero-sum game starts to sound familiar. It's a fact that that some people win in the market and some people lose, and as our readers know, we like facts. The market is unfair just as life is unfair. Not everyone is equal nor is everyone going to get their fair share. To approach trading as a battle for survival makes it easier to accept another fact which is that those people who work the hardest at trading will win. Now that is fair.

Buy and hold - the lazy approach: Enter a reporter for a major financial web site. This reporter contacted TurtleTrader seeking an opinion about the downsides of buy and hold approaches given the dramatic NASDAQ declines during the bubble. Obviously, if you bought and held the NASDAQ for the last few years, you lost money. We told our new friend that investors and traders must have a strategy. If the last few years of watching the NASDAQ tank taught investors anything, it is that buy and hold is not the greatest of strategies. We even went so far to opine that buy and hold is not a strategy at all, but rather an excuse to be lazy with your thinking and your money in the market. You can always say I buy and hold. Sounds nice and comforting, maybe even slightly sophisticated.

What do I do if life's unfair?: The reporter wanted to know what must investors do now? She wanted to know what we are advising investors to do who bought technology stocks, got slaughtered and are now burdened with mega losses. She asked us for specific advice for the investor who has been killed and now doesn't know what to do (gamblers anonymous). She wanted forecasts about what would happen next year.

You accept reality and move on: We replied there are no forecasts for next year. No one can forecast the future. You can only react to the present. Furthermore, people need to have a strategy that has an exit point before they ever enter the market. Know when you are going to exit before you enter. Become smart. Lose your Las Vegas quick riches mind set. Stop day trading. We pointed out that there are clear strategies you can use to exit markets at proper times that enhance profitability. We added that buy and hold approaches must be rejected as irrational, except, of course, for people expecting to live forever.

Reality is hard to accept: Our new friend, who contacted us for an opinion, went ballistic. She proceeded to begin a wide ranging debate that is a common response and offers interesting clues as to why people lose in the market. Some of her more strident observations:

• She asked if we were calling her stupid. She accused TurtleTrader of not worrying about all traders. She seemed to imply that investing must be a socialist exercise. We advised that people need a strategy.
• She wanted to know why day trading was bad. She knew plenty of people who day traded and it was a viable strategy. She berated us for not giving day trading a fair shake.
• She wanted to know what the single mother with three kids who worked all the time was supposed to do. (We wondered if TurtleTrader was a candidate for political office.) We calmly replied that the market doesn't care who you are, so you need a strategy. She was literally screaming that this was not fair.
• She retorted that people no longer listen to brokers in this new age of investing. We told her that tips from brokers were still a problem. Once we stated that broker's tips were still a problem she asked us to cite a study. If we could cite her a study that broker's tips were still a problem, our response would be front page news in her opinion.

At this point we politely ended the interview. Why pass this story along? Because for those who truly want to win at trading, it is always nice to be reminded that in the zero-sum game people like this reporter exist in droves. She presents a case study of all of the emotional and psychological roadblocks losing investors possess. We wish her the best, but she is destined to keep losing.

Australian Dollar Dive (part 2)

Yesterday we posted an article about the Australian dollar dive down. Today, we post excerpts from the article mentioned in the Sun-Herald along with our editorial comments.

Dennis [Richard Dennis' trading firm] did not see good news in a stable Australian economy. He saw an opportunity to make a quick buck. If Australia did not put up its interest rates there was not going to be a rise in the Aussie dollar and he saw no sense keeping the hundreds of millions of dollars he had tied up in our currency.

TurtleTrader® comment: Trend Followers don't trade to make quick bucks. They follow trends. The Aussie dollar has been going down for four years. This downward trend has been a great trading opportunity. Since when did traders, who take risks with their own money, have an obligation to prop up a currency?

Selling short means betting how low the Aussie dollar will go over the next hour or day. When traders all over the world do this it drives the dollar down regardless of what its true value must be.

TurtleTrader® comment: True value? The true value of a currency or anything else for that matter is what someone is willing to pay for it. Unless this reporter has some special group who decides true value, our definition stands.

The effect has been that record lows are now being broken almost daily. Financial experts declared the fall was not justified, that the Aussie dollar was worth far more on the international market, and still it fell.

TurtleTrader® comment: What effect? The traders caused the currency to go down? Who are these financial experts? This is just nonsense.

Australia now has to spend two dollars to buy one US dollar and the likelihood of this unfair and uneven level staying for years is very real. The continued fall in the Aussie dollar was not due to bad economic news, a natural catastrophe or political instability. Nothing has changed in the fundamentals of the sound Australian economy since that first disastrous January plunge.

TurtleTrader® comment: Untrue and unfair. The Australian currency has been dropping for many years. One of the primary reasons is that Australians themselves are converting to other currencies in order to invest in other countries with better rates of return.

To put it bluntly, Australia has done everything the global economic rationalists wanted us to do, and yet these same global commodity traders now treat us like dirt.

TurtleTrader® comment: Trend Followers are simply trading to make money. They put their money at risk every day. They are neither biased nor judgmental about the markets they trade. They are certainly not trading in order to treat anyone like dirt. This reporter is demonstrating her ignorance regarding basic market operations.

But the people who set the dollar rate, global traders sitting in front of glowing computer screens around the world, didn't exactly analyze complex graphs and reports on the sound state of the Australian economy and solid prospects for the future.

TurtleTrader® comment: The trend is down. Staying short for now is the plan most traders are following.

See the Aussie dollar chart drop here.

TurtleTrader conclusion: TurtleTrader has nothing against Australia. We are commenting on an article by an inept reporter to make a point about how many people hold misconceptions about trading. We could find the same mindless financial reporting to annotate in any country on the globe, including ours.

We recently spoke with a top reporter for one of Australia's largest daily newspapers (Sun-Herald). After reading this exchange you will come away with a clearer understanding of the wrong way to view to the market. The reporter is asking the questions.

Q. I want to ask what's wrong with our dollar and why it continues to fall when our economy is sound?
A. There are two problems with your dollar. First, better investments elsewhere are causing your dollar to sink as currency leaves your country. To some degree this is caused by Australians who want better returns in other markets outside of Australia. Second, the Aussie dollar has become a great currency to short. Traders make money as it sinks downward.

Q. Besides after we put on a great Olympics, why don't the money men want our currency?
A. The money men don't want your currency because its value against other currencies is sinking. Trend is straight down. No one wants to own a financial instrument that is trending down, including the Aussie dollar. Think about it. How can you make money by owning the Aussie dollar when it is dropping like a rock. One of the ways that the money men are making money off the Aussie dollar is by shorting it and making money as the price goes steadily downward.

Q. Can you give me some idea of how the US sees our dollar going from now on?
A. Who knows? Seriously, I am not being flippant. No one knows. Technical traders analyze price action, and the price is down. They will ride the Aussie dollar down as long as it will go.

Q. Will it continue falling through 50c? When might it climb back? Or is this sort of level around for good?
A. Who knows? Trend Followers just follow the trend till it ends. They don?t predict. All they do is look at what is, not what might be.

Q. Are the traders considering how sound the Australian economy is to decide whether to sell it down or not?
A. No. Not at all. Who cares if the economy is supposedly sound? What measure are you using? The only fact about the economy that is truly known is that the value of the currency is down. So traders short the currency.

Q. The Australian Treasurer Peter Costello is flying to the US this weekend to try and talk up our dollar emphasizing how strong and stable our economy is. Will this have any effect?
A. No. Technical traders are not interested in hearing what he has to say. In the press US traders will pay lip service to the significance of his visit. However, since the models they use say the trend is down, they will continue trading short.

See the dramatic chart drop here.

This reporter did end up spinning a story in which currency speculators are characterized as evil and bad people. As usual, the currency speculators are the ones to blame. Keep in mind that the Australian Dollar has been diving for four years, as the chart shows. That is not the fault of traders. For anyone interested, the story was in the 10.22.00 Sunday edition of the Australian Sun-Herald.