Over the last two weeks of 1983, while most sane people were on vacation, I and 12 others were trained by Richard Dennis in his trading methods. During the training class, many of the other Turtles took extensive notes. I didn’t. I tried to listen for the important points. I tried to figure out what were the keys to Rich’s success.

After those two weeks, four simple maxims stood out:

1. Trade with an edge: Find a trading strategy that will produce
   positive returns over the long run because it has a positive
   expectation.
2. Manage risk: Control risk so that you can continue to trade or
   you may not be around to see the benefits of a positive expectation
   system.
3. Be consistent: Execute your plan consistently to achieve the
   positive expectation of your system.
4. Keep it simple: For trend-followers success is as simple as never missing a trend.

That’s it. It doesn’t seem very difficult does it? That’s what I thought until our first month of actual trading. During that month and right before my 20th birthday heating oil took off, climbing from a low of $0.79 per gallon to over $1.04:

The odd thing was that none of the other Turtles followed these maxims. In fact, many of them watched a very large trend in Heating Oil pass them completely by. I actually made more than three times what the best of the other turtles did off this move because I paid attention to the four simple maxims stated above.

This was my first introduction to the idea that while trading as a Turtle was quite simple, it was not easy.

Originally posted by Curtis Faith, author of Way of the Turtle

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