The following PDF from Dutch-based trend follower Transtrend offers continued insight into the mind of a trend following trader:
Transtrend: Rotterdam’s Systematic Trading Operation
Transtrend is a Rotterdam-based systematic trading advisor founded in 1991. The firm is one of Europe’s most significant systematic trend following operations and one of the early institutional participants in the global managed futures industry. Its founding at the same time as Eckhardt Trading Company, 1991, places it in the same generation of systematic CTA operations that emerged as the managed futures industry moved from the Chicago floor-trading era into fully computerized systematic execution.
Transtrend’s position as a Dutch firm matters for the industry’s geographic story. The Netherlands has been a center of systematic, quantitative, and evidence-based approaches to markets for centuries, from the Dutch East India Company’s early joint-stock structure to the Amsterdam School of economics. The Dutch institutional investment culture, which emphasizes rigorous quantitative methodology and skepticism toward narrative-based investment decisions, produces the environment where systematic trend following finds natural institutional acceptance.
The Transtrend PDF linked on TurtleTrader represents one node in the broader network of systematic trading thought that Michael Covel’s research maps across dozens of managers and decades of documented performance. What the Dutch approach adds to the systematic trading literature is the perspective of a practitioner operating outside the Chicago-New York corridor where most of the Turtle experiment’s legacy resides. The convergence between European and American systematic approaches on the same fundamental principles confirms that trend following’s structural logic is not culturally specific. It is universal.
The insight into the “mind of a trend following trader” that the document offers is the same insight that distinguishes practitioners from theorists. The questions that systematic traders face daily, when the signal fires during an adverse market period, when the drawdown extends past the expected range, when markets that have trended for months enter an abrupt reversal, are not questions that backtesting fully prepares you for. The documents and interviews from practitioners across geographies that TurtleTrader collects provide the practical dimension that performance tables alone cannot convey.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Transtrend?
Transtrend is a Rotterdam, Netherlands-based systematic trend following commodity trading advisor founded in 1991. The firm is one of Europe’s major systematic managed futures operations and manages client capital across a globally diversified portfolio of futures markets using systematic price-based trend following rules.
Why is a Dutch systematic trading firm relevant to TurtleTrader?
Because it demonstrates that systematic trend following’s core principles operate identically across geographies and institutional cultures. The same approach that Richard Donchian developed in New York in the 1950s, that Dennis and Eckhardt refined in Chicago in the 1980s, and that the Turtles applied from 1984 onward was developed independently in similar form by European practitioners. The convergence on the same principles confirms that trend following captures structural behavioral features of markets rather than culturally specific trading patterns.
What does the “mind of a trend following trader” document reveal?
The psychological and decision-making framework that practitioners use to maintain systematic discipline through the conditions that make rule-following most difficult: extended drawdowns, prolonged flat periods, and moments when the system’s signals contradict the prevailing market narrative. The practical perspective of working systematic traders adds the experiential dimension to the theoretical framework that performance tables and system descriptions provide.
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