Psychological Rule #12: Great Traders Have Certain Qualities
Richard Dennis made a bet with Bill Eckhardt that he could teach his trading methods to anyone. However, what happened after that didn't answer the question. First, over 1000 people applied to be a Turtle and they were all given a short test. Second, the top 40 candidates were then screened with an in-person interview. Third, of the ten initially selected, some didn't make it. Sure, the Tutles as a whole are thought to indicate that Dennis won his bet. But if the bet involved teaching anyone, then it was clearly a failure.
I've always believed that if anyone can do something then you can teach someone else to do it to. But even I have certain requirements in my supertrader program. I'm looking for people who are committed, who believe that they create their own trading results, and who have enough money for trading for the program to make exonomic sense. My bias has definitely shifted to "if you have certain qualities, then you can be trained to be a great trader."
Comments
Probably, persistency combined with resilience and the ability to be to learn from ones failures are most important for success in every field.
Posted by: Mark | February 6, 2007 09:52 AM
Curtis Faith is about to release a book about the Turtles.. Should be fascinating stuff
In the meantime here’s a relevant quote by him:
"One of the things that distinguished the good Turtles from the ones that were completely unsuccessful is their personalities. The traders with a more intellectual and systematic approach to life were much more successful than the emotional traders who really wanted to make a lot of money.
Jerry Parker, who now runs Chesapeake Capital, is a good example. Jerry was very even tempered and had a background as an accountant. He has been very successful and one of the major reasons is that he was less affected by the ups and downs of the markets because of his even-tempered personality.
Another trader, who was fired from the program, is an example of the opposite. He was extremely interested in money and making it big. I remember during the program that he was shopping around for classic Rolls Royce cars. He was a flashy dresser and wore a lot of gold.
As a result of his strong desire to be rich, he was very greatly affected by the market swings. I remember one time that a profitable position came back giving up all the profits and I came back from vacation and noticed that his telephone was in little pieces. While I was out, he got extremely angry and smashed his telephone into bits.
He was never a good trader."
Posted by: donaldduke | February 8, 2007 10:50 PM
Thank you, thank you, thank you, a thousand thank you's. You are the first person that I have seen that actually said that there was a fundamental flaw in the evaluation of The Turtles. A handful of random people were not chosen...they were screened to a great degree, totally nulifying the test.
Posted by: Nick Koranda | May 25, 2007 09:37 PM