Bill Eckhardt left the University of Chicago and quite pursuing his almost finished PhD in mathematical logic in 1973. He focused his educational pursuits into research in creating profitable trading systems. Eckhardt teamed up with his high school friend Richard Dennis as traders and became partners in C&D Commodities They created technical trading systems and were the ones that the launched the famous turtle traders experiment.
The story of the turtle trading experiment have become famous, but the proof of its success is with all the successful professional traders it created. Eckhardt launched his own commodity trading advisor (CTA) in 1991, which has returned a compound annual return of 17.35% over 20 years and earned 21.09% in 2010. Eckhardt has developed a science to his trading and written many academic papers on the philosophy of science. He has a scientific approach to his trading.[1]
William Eckhardt Quotes
“The desire to maximize the number of winning trades (or minimize the number of losing trades) works against the trader. The success rate of trades is the least important performance statistic and may even be inversely related to performance.” – William Eckhardt
“It’s much easier to learn what you should do in trading than to do it. Good systems tend to violate normal human tendencies.” – William Eckhardt
“Amateurs go broke taking large losses, professionals go broke taking small profits.” – William Eckhardt
“I take the point of view that missing an important trade is a much more serious error than making a bad trade.” – William Eckhardt
“I haven’t seen much correlation between good trading and intelligence. Some outstanding traders are quite intelligent, but a few aren’t. Many outstanding intelligent people are horrible traders. Average intelligence is enough. Beyond that, emotional makeup is more important.” – William Eckhardt
“Don’t think about what the market’s going to do; you have absolutely no control over that. Think about what you’re going to do if it gets there.” – William Eckhardt
“People want to buy cheap and sell dear; this by itself makes them countertrend. But the notion of cheapness or dearness must be anchored to something. People tend to view the prices they’re used to as normal and prices removed from these levels as aberrant. This perpective leads people to trade counter to an emerging trend on the assumption that prices will eventually return to “normal”. Therein lies the path to disaster.” – William Eckhardt
“In many ways, large profits are even more insidious than large losses in terms of emotional destabilization. I think it’s important not to be emotionally attached to large profits. I’ve certainly made some of my worst trades after long periods of winning. When you’re on a big winning streak, there’s a temptation to think that you’re doing something special, which will allow you to continue to propel yourself upward. You start to think that you can afford to make shoddy decisions. You can imagine what happens next. As a general rule, losses make you strong and profits make you weak.” – William Eckhardt
“What feels good is often the wrong thing to do.” – William Eckhardt
“If the losses don’t hurt, your financial survival is tenuous.” – William Eckhardt
William Eckhardt Net Worth
It can be estimated that William Eckhardt’s net worth is close to his partner’s Richard Dennis who was worth over $200 million in the first decade of his career when they worked together.
William Eckhardt Books
Paradoxes in Probability Theory
