Russell Sands was one of the original “turtles” trained by the famous commodity trader Richard Dennis. Dennis believed that commodity traders could be trained, as opposed to a colleague who believed great trading was an innate ablility. To settle a bet, Dennis placed ads in trade magazines and interviewed hundreds of candidates, eventually choosing 32 trainees. The new traders were named turtles, after the turtles Dennis saw being raised on a farm in Singapore.
By the way, if that story line sounds familiar, you may have seen the movie Trading Places, starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd. And for my only movie review on this site, I give it two thumbs up. Very funny.
Back to Russell Sands. When Dennis trained his turtles they all had to sign agreements not to reveal any of the secrets they were taught. Dennis had good reason to want his methods to remain secret. Starting with a very small amout of money, he built it into a fortune. In fact, when you see those advertisements for trading systems which talk about “one person even turned 400 dollars into 200 million” they are refering to Richard Dennis. Keep in mind that he is also the only one to ever to that.
On the other hand, Russell Sands is the only turtle to actually reveal the complete turtle trading strategy. He says that the term of his secrecy agreement expired and he is now revealing all. I did hear that some of the other turtles were upset that he did this. Perhaps they have reason to be upset. Many of Dennis’ former students are hugely successful traders managing some of the largest commodity funds. In fact there can be no doubt that Dennis won the bet. To quote Dan Akroyd, that will be “one dollar”.
So, Russell Sands will sell you these great secrets for around 100 dollars. Is this a bargain or what? Well, it just might be. If you are interested in trading, you need to understand the principles of this method. After all it has a very impressive track record. People have made fortunes with these techniques.
Tutle trading is an extremely simple method and that is the beauty of it. It is known as trend following. This means simply that you buy something and hold it as long as it keeps going up and never sell until it goes down,or vice versa. Buy and sell signals are simple triggers such as buy when price makes a new 20 day high and sell when price makes a new 10 day low.
One drawback is that it takes a good bit of capital to get started. I would say ten thousand would be a conservative minimum to start with. Commodity trading is not like stocks, where you can buy 100 dollars worth of stock and see what happens. In commodities, you need thousands of dollars in your account before you can buy even1of some contracts.
Another thing to consider is extreme volatility. You can lose (or make) large chunks of money literally overnight.
Most importantly, I believe, is that this type of trading is very difficult psycologically. You will lose more often than you win. While this is not a problem for a trading system, as long as your wins are big enough, it can be tough to take. One year when I subscribed to his newsletter, Russell Sands was down for most of the year, and starting to sound a bit depressed himself. He had a great December and eventually ended the year profitable. To his credit he stuck with his system all through the losing times.
Do you think you could start with 10,0000 dollars and watch it go down to 5,000 and still stick with the system. Most people can’t. An important point perhaps, is that all the professional turtle traders are trading OPM. That is, other peoples money. It may be easier to stick with the plan when it is not your entire stake on the line.
In summary , Russell Sands is what he says he is. He is a successful turtle trader revealing the system as he learned it. It may be telling, however, that he feels the need to raise money by selling his course.
While I believe there are much easier ways to earn a living, if you are interested in trading of any type I would consider this essential reading. I reccomend Russell Sands’ Turtle Trading