Rating: - Lots of good stuff
I've got a lot from other's reviews in the past, so thought I should contribute my bit. So here goes.

The original complete Turtle trading rules are the LAST chapter of this book, which tells you something, though the skeleton is given early and key concepts are introduced throughout the book. Faith acknowledges the Turtle rules were relatively simple and,while obviously extremely successful in the right hands, could be significantly improved on or beaten in performance by other approaches. Whether these rules would be similarly successful today is not covered and up to you to find out. So, if you are looking for a simple paint it by numbers path to riches, firstly you are kidding yourself and secondly you would be misguided if you thought you had found it with this book.

The book gives a good insight and backgound to the psychology of trading and I think it makes pretty clear why Faith was the best of the turtle traders. It has some useful stuff on expectations of system and trading performance in different market states. Plus discussion on diversification accross markets and position sizing relative to market volatility. Most of that is from a futures market perspective, but the concepts are of some value for stock traders also, in my view.

A lot of the book considers system testing and measures, particularly the statistical uncertainty and testing biases and flaws involved and how easy it is to kid yourself - to get much poorer actual performance than testing would indicate and to cop a much bigger drawdown than you thought possible. The book points out that the reality is much harder to cope with than you will probably have thought, when you started trading a system with an expected 30% drawdown! I had thought I would not be particularly interested in all this, as I am a stock trader, particularly in small caps, but it is written in a very accessible way and I found that what could otherwise be very dry and detailed material was an interesting and easy enough read with good insights.

I've traded full time for three years and have been involved in smallish scale share investing on my own behalf for over twenty. If you are not interested in system testing and performance measures then there is a good chunk of the book that you will probably think you are not interested in, but I'd suggest that you are asking for trouble by not being interested in at least performance measures! I got more out of those sections than I expected.

Overall I think the book gives good insights into the how of the success of the Turtles approach, though often by reading between the lines and recognising the applicability of the broader lessons to what the Turtles were doing. The simple is less simple than it would appear. It gives good insights into what it takes to be successful as an individual trader, with these insights often popping up in unexpected places through the book and by interesting and real anecdotes in many cases. It gives some good references for follow up reading.

If you expect miracles for a few bucks, then go read the Tales of Narnia. But IMHO there's more good advice in this than you should expect for the price of a book, particularly one as accessible as this. If you don't get it straight away, have a look at some of the other references, I'd say particularly Elder and Van Tharp, have a go at trading for a bit, then have another look at Curtis. On the other hand, if you have been trading for years, you may still find something valuable here and a pretty enjoyable read related to a bit of trading history.

Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom

Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management

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Rating: - very good for system traders
This is a very good book for system traders. It deals with various aspects of system trading and also explains in detail the discipline necessary for sticking with a system.

This book is a must for any serious trader whether professional or a new comer.

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Rating: - great and sincere, but not for the newbie traders
Great read, very good thoughts on optimization and Monte Carlo simulations.. something I've been thinking of but couldn't formulate my thoughts on a subject, Curtis with huge experience does it well. Very good read on Turtle's story and some of his personal experiences with the class, life lessons learned and trading lessons. Curtis doesn't go to explain the basics of trading in this book, so if you dont know them yet, this book will not be clear for you.However, there's more to it than just a trading technique being explained that they used in the Turtles class, its all about one young man's dream to become a great profitable trader, which he did and showed once again with the help of Richard Dennis that it IS possible to trade successfully.

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Rating: - The DEFINITIVE book on Turtle trading
Don't look any further if you want to understand the
rules, tools, and psychology of Turtle trading. Curtis
Faith captures all in Way of the Turtle, which is one
of the finest books on trading available. Van Tharp
wasn't kidding when he called the book "one of the five
best books on trading ever written." Boy howdy...
he wasn't fooling!



From the fly-on-the-wall retelling of how the
Turtles came to be - a story the reclusive Richard
Dennis hasn't told in full even yet - to the blow-by-
blow detail of the trades made famous by the Turtles,
this is THE definitive book on what the Turtles were
about and their methods. And not only is it written
by one of the Turtles, its author was the top-earning
Turtle during his time with Dennis.



The chapters on trading psychology are the jewel
in the crown: insightful and applicable - probably
why Van Tharp has such a high opinion of this book.
Van, an author himself, is one of the leading gurus
in trading psychology. (Van's recent book, the second
edition of Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom, is
also a must-read for anyone serious about trading,
in my opinion.)


Finally, from the horse's mouth comes the story and
techniques of the long-secretive Turtles. There are lots
of imitators out there who think they know why the Turtles
succeeded -- Curtis can tell you why.

This is the ultimate book on Turtle trading (and trend
following for that matter). I said it before and I'll
say it again:

Don't look any further than Way of the Turtle. There's no need.

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Rating: - Refer to this one often
This is a good read for trend following systems developers, and is worthwhile. The author demonstrates the need for risk control, internal control and total commitment to ones own trading process.

He mentions that long term trend following is likely unsuitable for the average trader/investor, which I would also agree with. How many traders could live with 30-40% draw downs and a win-loss ratio of 35-45%? Not many, which is why only the most committed and well capitalized stock/forex/futures traders will be able to enjoy substantial profits with this general method. The author even reveals that the method had more than a dozen consecutive losses trading a certain futures contract during 1998 before beginning a return to substantial profitability. How many losers would you have endured before bailing out? Five? Ten? Fifteen? Yet, those who had the psychological strength to take every trade would have profited nicely - over the longer term. His discussion of Monte Carlo simulation flaws is also essential for anyone who tends to put too much faith in raw back test/simulation runs.

If you read closely, you'll also see that the peculiar Turtle trade entry strategy was/is critical to the overall profitability of the method. This is good stuff, and shows just how defensive Mr. Dennis and Mr. Eckhardt really were of their trading capital.

The beauty of the Turtle system lies in its non-optimized, non-curve fitted parameters. Trade it long enough, according to the rules(with sufficient capitalization)and long term trading success can become a reality for totally committed traders.

Overall, a very satisfying read, one meant to be referred to on a regular basis. The information contained within it could save beginning futures traders from financial catastrophe.