Richard Dennis
Richard Dennis ( born January 9, 1949 in Chicago ) was a commodity speculator with the nickname "The Prince of the Pit ." He became famous with the saying "You can breed traders like turtles in Singapore ," which he also tried to prove in an experiment with his friend and mathematician William Eckhardt.
Life
17 years old, Dennis worked as an errand boy at the stock exchange in Chicago (Chicago Mercantile Exchange). Since he himself was not allowed to act, his father bought shares for him. But the business was not a success. At age 21, he began at DePaul University in Chicago to study philosophy ( completion 1970: Bachelor of Arts), later he got a scholarship to Tulane University in Louisiana. But at age 23, he returned to Chicago and borrowed 2000 USD to get back to work on the stock exchange ( Mid America Exchange). 1600 USD cost of the space, and with the rest he speculated. And he was lucky: it was the year 1972, and he observed that the grain prices despite rising levels of supply continued to rise. This was due to the Russians, who bought up by crop failures on the world market grain in a big way. It went down in history as the " Great Russian Grain Robbery". With 25 Dennis was a millionaire, and in 1980 there were already 400 million.
The dream ended on 19 October 1987, when he miscalculated the stock market crash, the Dow Jones industrial average lost approximately 22.6%, Dennis and his fund a lot of money. In a process led in 1990 to a settlement in which he paid $ 2.5 million. He walked for a long time retired and came back in 1994 with a computerized trading system. In 2000 he again went into retirement, his fund had lost 50%.
Privately, he had often donated to political parties and was on the board of the Cato Institute 's. Here he published the 1991 Essay Toward a Moral Drug Policy.
The Turtle Trader
Together with his friend William Eckhardt Dennis made 1983 an experiment: Can we learn speculating or is it a gift? 10 volunteers were trained within 14 days of punters and should always speculate with 1,000,000 ( real ) USD at the exchange.
The two switched ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post. From 1000 applicants 10 were picked and trained in 14 days. Their breadth ranged from chess grandmaster to 19 -year-old school leavers (Curtis Faith ). On average, participants designated by Dennis as Turtles made 80 % profit.