You're sort of tempted after a certain period of under performance to tinker with your systems and call up research. Then as soon as you implement the new research you find out, well the older systems would have performed better
—Jerry Parker
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
- About the Turtles and how the unique experiment grew into the Managed Futures/CTA Industry
- How Wall Street Leaks inspired Jerry into understanding the industry
- How Jerry encountered trend following for the first time
- The One Sentence culture in Richard J. Dennis's office
The Turtle program was so amazing because our client understood trading unlike most clients and actually created those systems. He created the Turtles.
—Jerry Parker- How to excel at unprecedented tests from leading traders
- What it was like moving to Chicago to train as a Turtle
- What the Turtle training was like and the mindset provided in the training
- The most challenging thing about Trend Following when Jerry started with Richard Dennis
I probably trade the original system philosophy as much as humanly possible.
—Jerry Parker- About the transition from Turtle Trading to starting his own organization, Chesapeake Capital in 1998
- The evolution of Chesapeake's strategy from day one after leaving Richard Dennis's program
- The early focus on diversification and adding new markets
- Issues with trying to improve the original Richard Dennis
- The shift in investor expectations with the growth of institutional investment organizations while operating on of the largest CTA firms in the industry
- Why it's best to take an optimal loss rather than a small loss
- On the meaningfulness of track records and what else investors should be encouraged to explore when choosing an investment management decision
Typical Rich (Richard Dennis) he was just very understanding and he just knew how to motivate people. He was a very kind person.
—Jerry ParkerThe advertisement Jerry responded to in 1983:
Richard J. Dennis and CD commodities is accepting applications for the position of Commodity Future Trader to expand his established group of traders. Mr. Dennis and his associate will train a small group of applicants in his proprietary trading concepts. Successful candidates will then trade solely for Mr. Dennis. They will not be allowed to trade futures for themselves or others. Traders will be paid a percentage of their trading profits and will be allowed a small draw. Prior experience will be considered, but is not necessary. Applicants should send a brief resume with one sentence giving their reason for applying.
Resources & Links Mentioned in this Episode:
- The Barefoot Trader (Article about Richard Dennis in Wall Street Journal)
- Learn more about Richard J. Dennis the founder of the Turtle program
I would change in a heartbeat if I could improve, but I just haven't seen anything better than what we were taught. Especially given the fact that I'm always going to error on the side of robust systems, being conservative and not trying to do things to my systems that would weaken their reliability.
—Jerry ParkerSponsored by Swiss Financial Services and Saxo Bank:
Connect with Chesapeake Capital:
Visit the Website: www.chesapeakecapital.com
Call Chesapeake Capital: +1 804 836 1617
E-Mail Chesapeake Capital: clientservices@chesapeakecapital.com
Follow Jerry Parker on Linkedin & Twitter
Bad ideas can work for a long period of time. That's one of the things that Rich told us. If you lose 50% of your money, then you get fired. But he said, 'I'm going to look at all of this based upon how well you're following the rules. If you're making money but not following the rules, you're also going to be fired. If you're losing money and you're following the rules, then that might be ok.' That's sort of the problem with evaluating traders with a small sample size. Bad ideas can seem to work. Any idea that cuts your profit short in the trend following space, eventually is not going to work very well.
—Jerry Parker