Mike Shannon’s path to Richard Dennis was among the most unlikely in a program defined by unlikely candidates. He had left school at sixteen, worked as a commodity broker by his own admission very badly, and got himself into the Turtle selection process by submitting a fabricated resume. Dennis hired him anyway. The choice was consistent with Dennis’s entire philosophy: credentials were not the point. Character, disposition, and the capacity to follow a system under pressure were the point. Shannon had those things. The phony resume was almost beside the point.
He later described watching friends try to pull Dennis into a lifestyle befitting his wealth, recalling that Bill Eckhardt and others eventually forced Dennis to move out of his South Side studio apartment into something more appropriate. Shannon was close enough to the center of the program to observe it from the inside, and his update to this site in 2003 provides one of the more candid first-person accounts of what the Turtle experience led to for those who used it as a launching pad rather than an endpoint.
On the Name “Turtle”
Shannon also offered a corrective to the most widely repeated origin story of the Turtle name. The conventional account, repeated in many tellings of the Dennis legend, is that Dennis coined the name after visiting a turtle farm in Singapore and declaring he would grow traders the way they grew turtles there. Shannon contradicted this directly: the original name in the first year of the program was the Disciples. He traced the “Turtle” label to an obscure interview in which the interviewer coined it independently to describe the group, and noted that it stuck for reasons no one could fully explain. The name has outlasted the program by decades. Shannon’s account is a reminder that trading mythology accretes quickly and that even participants sometimes preserve different versions of the same story.
After the Program: Europe, Baldwin, BNP/Cooper Neff
When Dennis wound down the Turtle program, Shannon did not stop. His 2003 update traces a career arc that is more wide-ranging than most of his cohort: he relocated to Europe specifically to expand the trend following methodology into international futures markets, a move that reflected genuine intellectual ambition rather than just geographic restlessness. The managed futures universe was broadening during the late 1980s and 1990s, and Shannon was positioning himself at that frontier.
He then returned to Chicago to work alongside Tom Baldwin, one of the great bond futures pit traders of his era, to develop what Shannon called a better sense of micro trading and strategic trade execution. This was an unusual move for a systematic trend follower. Baldwin’s edge was rooted in reading order flow and market microstructure in real time, skills that sit at the opposite end of the spectrum from the longer-horizon systematic rules the Turtles were taught. Shannon was deliberately acquiring a complementary dimension, understanding how execution affected performance at the margin.
He subsequently joined BNP/Cooper Neff, the quantitative trading operation built by Richard Cooper and Andy Sterge. Cooper Neff was known for sophisticated derivatives and options work, and Shannon’s time there extended his toolkit further beyond the original Turtle framework. He described the experience as very rewarding. His final institutional stop before stepping back from active trading was with Dr. Kaveh Alamouti, a former London School of Economics professor running a fund for Louis Bacon of Moore Capital Management in London. That trajectory, from Dennis’s Chicago classroom to a billion-dollar London fund managed by one of the most respected macro traders of the era, speaks to the durability of the Turtle foundation as a credential and a skill base.
The Turtle Method Across Markets
Shannon’s most significant intellectual contribution in his 2003 update is the assertion that the Turtle methodology was viable not just in commodity futures but in stocks, options, forwards, and foreign exchange. That claim, made by a practitioner who had tested it across institutional settings on multiple continents, carries more weight than the theoretical arguments made by those who had not. The Turtle rules were designed around price breakouts and systematic risk management, principles that apply wherever liquid, trending markets exist. Shannon’s career provided empirical validation of that universality.
His instinct to expand the methodology geographically and across asset classes connects him to the broader trend following tradition. John W. Henry, Bill Dunn, and others built institutions explicitly on diversified global approaches. Shannon’s path was more peripatetic, moving through institutional roles rather than building a single firm, but the intellectual direction was the same: more markets, more instruments, more data, same core principles.
The Broker Who Faked His Way In
The fabricated resume story is worth sitting with, not as a cautionary tale but as evidence of something Dennis valued that formal screening processes often miss. Shannon knew he was a bad broker. He knew his real credentials would not get him through the door. He also knew he wanted the opportunity badly enough to manufacture a path to it. That combination of self-awareness and audacity, combined with a willingness to do whatever was necessary to get a shot, is not so different from what Jerry Parker‘s drive looked like from the outside or what Tom Shanks‘s boot-mounted computer expressed to Dennis in a different context. Dennis was selecting for energy, resourcefulness, and the desire to win. Shannon demonstrated all three before he had traded a single contract.
His endorsement of Michael Covel’s account of the Turtle story was unambiguous: “The book was wonderful.” Coming from someone who arrived at the program through a fake resume and left it as a practitioner who had worked across three continents, that endorsement reflects a genuine appreciation for having the full story told accurately.
Original Content from TurtleTrader
Michael Shannon was a Turtle trained by Richard Dennis. He recently offered this update to TurtleTrader.com, in October of 2003: The term “turtle” comes from a potential investment by Richard Dennis into a turtle farm in Southeast Asia for use as fertilizer and animal feed. In an obscure interview with Mr. Dennis, the interviewer coined the term to describe us and for some bizarre reason it stuck. I left the “Turtle” program when Richard Dennis discontinued it and decided to further sharpen my trading skills and educate myself to be a better trader. I relocated to Europe to expand the methodology to include the international futures markets. Later I joined legendary trader Thomas Baldwin in Chicago to get a better sense of micro trading and strategic trade execution to enhance performance. After that I felt that the Turtle methodology was viable in the stock market (and other markets including options, forwards and FX) and was fortunate to be offered a position at BNP/Cooper Neff, the quantitative trading operation. It was a very rewarding experience working with Richard Cooper and Andy Sterge the current CEO. Finally, I was hired by the European trading guru Dr. Kaveh Alamouti a former professor from the London School of Economics. He is currently running a US$ one billion fund for Louis Bacon of Moore Capital management in London. Currently, I am on hiatus from trading to pursue political and other personal causes but I’m in the process of putting a “dream team” of traders together that will trade highly diversified global markets. In short, I love trading and risk.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Mike Shannon?
Mike Shannon is an original Turtle trader trained by Richard Dennis. He left school at sixteen, worked as a commodity broker, and gained entry to the Turtle program via a fabricated resume. After the program ended he built an institutional trading career spanning Chicago, Europe, and London, working with Tom Baldwin, BNP/Cooper Neff, and eventually a fund managed for Louis Bacon of Moore Capital.
Where does the name “Turtle” actually come from?
Shannon provided an account that differs from the most commonly repeated version. He stated that the group’s original name was the Disciples, and that “Turtle” was coined by an interviewer in an obscure interview with Dennis, after which it stuck. The competing version holds that Dennis named the group after visiting a turtle farm in Singapore. Shannon’s firsthand account is a useful corrective to the mythology that surrounds the program.
What did Shannon do after the Turtle program?
Shannon relocated to Europe to apply the trend following methodology to international futures markets, then returned to Chicago to work with pit trader Tom Baldwin on execution and microstructure. He subsequently joined BNP/Cooper Neff’s quantitative trading operation and later worked for Dr. Kaveh Alamouti, who managed a billion-dollar fund for Louis Bacon of Moore Capital Management in London.
Trend Following Systems
Want to learn more and start trading trend following systems? Start here.
