Turtles Traded

What the Turtles Traded

The Turtles traded liquid futures that traded on U.S. exchanges in
Chicago and New York.

The Turtles were futures traders, at the time more popularly called commodities traders. We traded futures contracts on the most popular U.S. commodities exchanges.

Since we were trading millions of dollars, we could not trade markets that only traded a few hundred contracts per day because that would mean that the orders we generated would move the market so much that it would be too difficult to enter and exit positions without taking large losses. The Turtles traded only the most liquid markets. In general, the Turtles traded all liquid U.S. markets except the grains and the meats.

Since Richard Dennis was already trading the full position limits for his own account, he could not permit us to trade grains for him without exceeding the exchange’s position limits.

We did not trade the meats because of a corruption problem with the floor traders in the meat pits. Some years after the Turtles disbanded, the FBI conducted a major sting operation in the Chicago meat pits and indicted many traders for price manipulation and other forms of corruption.
The following is a list of the futures markets traded by the Turtles:

Chicago Board of Trade
􀂃 30 Year U.S. Treasury Bond
􀂃 10 Year U.S. Treasury Note

New York Coffee Cocoa and Sugar Exchange
􀂃 Coffee
􀂃 Cocoa
􀂃 Sugar
􀂃 Cotton

Chicago Mercantile Exchange
􀂃 Swiss Franc
􀂃 Deutschmark
􀂃 British Pound
􀂃 French Franc
􀂃 Japanese Yen
􀂃 Canadian Dollar
􀂃 S&P 500 Stock Index
􀂃 Eurodollar
􀂃 90 Day U.S. Treasury Bill

Comex
􀂃 Gold
􀂃 Silver
􀂃 Copper

New York Mercantile Exchange
􀂃 Crude Oil
􀂃 Heating Oil
􀂃 Unleaded Gas

The Turtles were given the discretion of not trading any of the commodities on the list. However, if a trader chose not to trade a particular market, then he was not to trade that market at all. We were not supposed to trade markets inconsistently.