TurtleTrader.com® has been the definitive home of the original TurtleTrader story since 1996. It is the only site that documents the complete history of how a group of complete beginners were trained in trend following rules and went on to generate over $100 million in profits. This page collects the primary source documents, original photographs, and background materials that form the historical record of the experiment.
These are not summaries or secondhand accounts. They are original source materials — newspaper articles, magazine spreads, trading floor documents, and photographs — that chronicle the real story behind the most famous experiment in Wall Street history.
Why Primary Sources Matter
The TurtleTrader story has been retold, distorted, and mythologised many times over the decades. Versions of it appear in books, podcasts, forums, and finance courses around the world. Most of those versions are incomplete at best and inaccurate at worst.
The documents on this page are the foundation that separates fact from legend. They are the materials that Michael Covel assembled over more than a decade of research, interviews, and investigation into the original trend following experiment. They show the story as it happened, not as it has been romanticised in popular retelling.
For anyone serious about understanding trend following at its source, these documents are essential reading.
The Background Documents
The Wall Street Journal Article
The Wall Street Journal article is one of the earliest major press accounts of the TurtleTrader experiment. Published years after the experiment concluded, it gave the public its first real glimpse into what had happened in those two trading classes in 1983 and 1984. The headline framed the central question: can trend following skill be taught, or is it innate? The experiment had answered that question. This article brought the answer to a wider audience.
Read the full Wall Street Journal article
The Architect of the Experiment
A self-made trader from the South Side of Chicago, Richard Dennis turned a few hundred dollars into an estimated $200 million by his mid-thirties using systematic trend following principles. He believed that what he had learned could be taught to anyone willing to follow a disciplined set of rules. These photographs document the man behind the legend at the height of his career.
C&D Commodities: The Trading Operation
C&D Commodities was the firm that recruited and trained the TurtleTraders. This buy and sell slip is a primary source document from the operation itself, a physical artifact from the firm where the experiment took place. It is a reminder that this was not a theoretical exercise. Real money was traded, real positions were opened and closed, and real profits and losses accumulated on documents like this one.
The Magazine That Started Everything
This is the July 1994 issue of Financial World magazine that first put the TurtleTrader story on Covel’s radar. Inside, the magazine ranked the top one hundred paid players on Wall Street for 1993. Twenty-fifth on the list was an obscure accountant from rural Virginia, described as a former pupil trained in trend following. That single biographical note launched more than a decade of research that became The Complete TurtleTrader.
The Most Successful TurtleTrader
These documents track the career arc of the TurtleTrader who went furthest. In 1993 he earned $35 million trading from an office in rural Virginia using the trend following rules taught to him in two weeks. By the time the later documents were published, he was managing over a billion dollars at Chesapeake Capital. His story is the clearest proof that the TurtleTrader experiment worked.
From Game Designer to TurtleTrader
Mike Carr developed war games and role-playing titles for Dungeons and Dragons before picking up the Wall Street Journal for the first time in six months and seeing the ad. He called his decision to apply “Divine Providence.” His story illustrates how wide the net was cast and how little prior financial experience had to do with who was selected. The document here shows where he came from before trend following changed his career entirely.
And the story continues. The performance keeps on keeping on.
About TurtleTrader.com
TurtleTrader.com® has been operated by Covel since 1996, making it the longest-running and most comprehensive source on the TurtleTrader story anywhere online. The research spanned more than a decade and included the first-ever on-the-record interviews with individual TurtleTraders.
The site is the companion to The Complete TurtleTrader, the only narrative account of the experiment with first-hand interviews from the participants themselves. The book has been translated into German, Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, and Russian. The accompanying podcast has over 15 million listens across more than 1,300 episodes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long has TurtleTrader.com been online?
Since 1996, making it one of the longest-running trading education sites on the internet. It predates most of the sites, forums, and resources that now discuss the TurtleTrader story, and it remains the only site built on direct access to the primary participants and documents.
What makes TurtleTrader.com different from other sources?
Most accounts of the TurtleTrader story are secondhand, based on the book, forum discussions, or other derivative sources. TurtleTrader.com is the original source, built by the person who conducted the first-ever on-the-record interviews with the TurtleTraders and assembled the primary documents on this page.
Where can I read the original TurtleTrader rules?
The rules taught to the TurtleTraders are documented in full on the Rules page. They cover entries, exits, position sizing, risk management, and the philosophical foundation of the entire trend following system.
Who were the TurtleTraders?
The TurtleTraders were 23 people selected from over 1,000 applicants who responded to a classified ad placed in 1983. They came from backgrounds ranging from accounting and music to game design and the military. Most had no prior experience with trend following or financial markets. The full selection story is here.
New to the TurtleTrader story? Start with the full story here