Stig Ostgaard was an original Turtle trained by Richard Dennis. In the 1989 Wall Street Journal ranking of Turtle traders, he placed first with a 124.1 percent average annual return across the 1985 to 1988 period, with individual annual returns ranging from 87.8 to 296.7 percent. In 1984 alone, his return was an extraordinary 296.56 percent, the highest single-year result of any Turtle in that documented cohort. He was the top performer of a group that collectively averaged 80 percent annually while the Barclay CTA Index returned 25 percent and the S&P 500 returned 19.2 percent over the same period.
The numbers tell the first part of the story. What makes Ostgaard particularly valuable to the turtletrader.com project is the second part: he went on to spend 25 years researching the intellectual origins of trend following, wrote a serious essay on the nature and history of the methodology, and contributed that work to Michael Covel’s Trend Commandments. He was not simply a practitioner of the approach. He was one of its most thoughtful historians.
The Numbers in Context
Ostgaard’s ranking at the top of the 1989 WSJ table needs to be understood alongside the variation it reflects. The Turtles were all taught the same rules by the same teachers in the same compressed period. Yet their results across the documented years varied enormously. In 1984, while Ostgaard was up 296.56 percent, Jerry Parker lost 10.04 percent and Liz Cheval lost 20.98 percent. The following year Parker returned 128.87 percent while Tom Shanks managed 18.1 percent.
That variation is not a puzzle. It is a feature of how systematic trend following actually works. The Turtles were rules-based but not fully automated. Individual judgment in execution, the specific markets traded at any given time, timing of entries at the margin, and the particular trend environment during any calendar year all produced different outcomes from the same underlying framework. Ostgaard’s extraordinary 1984 result reflected both superior execution and an exceptionally favorable trend environment for the specific positions he held. His 124.1 percent average over four years reflects something more durable: consistent application of the methodology across multiple market environments.
After the Program: Last Atlantis Capital Management
Ostgaard did not retire after the Turtle program ended. He spent the following decades continuing to research, test, and develop systematic trading approaches, eventually becoming Managing Director of Trading and Research at Last Atlantis Capital Management, based in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. In 2006, after 25 years of research and trading experience, he launched the LACM Trend Following Futures Program within the Last Atlantis Master Fund, working alongside Irwin Berger, a former vice chairman of Sjo Inc.
The program described exactly what Ostgaard had spent a career building: a diversified basket of trend following systems trading approximately 25 futures markets, evenly split between financials (currencies, interest rates, stock indices) and commodities (foods, grains, metals, energy). Position sizes adjusted based on trend signal strength, designed to maximize absolute returns as trends accelerated or declined. As Ostgaard described it: “The result is a program designed to maximize absolute returns through systematic allocation adjustment as trends accelerate or abate.” The architecture is recognizably descended from the Turtle foundation, evolved through decades of independent research.
On the Nature and Origins of Trend Following
The contribution that distinguishes Ostgaard beyond his trading record is his essay on the origins of trend following, which Michael Covel reprinted in Trend Commandments. Ostgaard noted that while trend following had been a popular trading philosophy for many years, surprisingly little had been written about its origins and history. The scarcity of available information prior to the early 20th century, combined with the fact that trend following as a philosophy had not been completely articulated until around the 1950s, left the methodology’s intellectual genealogy largely undocumented.
That observation matters because it locates the Turtle experiment in a longer arc. Dennis did not invent trend following. Richard Donchian formalized its rules. Ed Seykota computerized them. Dennis and Eckhardt systematized the transmission of the methodology through the Turtle program. But the underlying insight, that prices trend, that following those trends with discipline and risk management produces positive long-run returns, predates all of them by centuries. Ostgaard understood that context and chose to document it, which is something few practitioners with his track record have done.
What Ostgaard’s Career Tells Us
The combination of the best documented performance record in the 1989 WSJ rankings and a career-long commitment to researching the intellectual foundations of the methodology he practiced makes Ostgaard one of the most complete figures in the Turtle story. He proved the system worked at the highest level. He then spent decades understanding why it worked, where it came from, and how to continue evolving it.
That combination, practitioner and historian, mirrors what the best systematic traders have always done. Eckhardt described trend following as a living methodology in which no part of the system remains unchanged across decades, even as the underlying principles persist. Ostgaard’s career is a concrete illustration of that principle: the Turtle rules he was taught in 1983 became the foundation for systems that looked quite different 25 years later, while remaining anchored to the same core logic of following price trends with disciplined risk management.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Stig Ostgaard?
Stig Ostgaard is one of the original Turtle traders trained by Richard Dennis. He ranked first in the 1989 Wall Street Journal performance ranking with a 124.1 percent average annual return across 1985 to 1988, including a 296.56 percent single-year return in 1984. He went on to found the LACM Trend Following Futures Program at Last Atlantis Capital Management and wrote an influential essay on the origins and nature of trend following.
What was Stig Ostgaard’s performance record?
In the 1989 WSJ ranking of 14 Turtle traders, Ostgaard placed first with a 124.1 percent average annual return. His annual returns ranged from 87.8 to 296.7 percent across the documented period, with a single-year return of 296.56 percent in 1984, the highest of any Turtle in that cohort. He outperformed the Barclay CTA Index average of 25 percent and the S&P 500 return of 19.2 percent by substantial margins.
What did Ostgaard do after the Turtle program?
Ostgaard spent 25 years continuing to research and develop systematic trading approaches before launching the LACM Trend Following Futures Program at Last Atlantis Capital Management in 2006. He also wrote a serious essay on the origins and history of trend following, which was reprinted in Michael Covel’s Trend Commandments, making him one of the few original Turtles to contribute substantively to the intellectual history of the methodology.
Why did the Turtles produce such different results if they all used the same rules?
The variation reflects several factors: individual judgment in execution, the specific timing of entries and exits at the margin, which markets each trader was most active in during any period, and the particular trend environment during each calendar year. Systematic rules reduce but do not eliminate these sources of variation. The Turtles were rules-based but not fully automated, which preserved enough individual discretion to produce meaningfully different outcomes from the same underlying framework.
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