Trading Places Was Real! - by Frederik Gieschen

Is success in markets a question of innate qualities or can it be taught? Nature or nurture? Anyone wrestling with the Midwit Valley hopes for nurture. Learn, improve, and achieve mastery. But then you ponder someone like Buffett — a singular obsession with business, a photographic memory, and ice in his veins when it comes to markets. The legendary players are outliers. In the 1980s, two Chicago traders asked themselves the same question: nature or nurture? They made a bet, like in the classic Wall Street movie Trading Places. Could they teach a group of people their method and would they succeed? Richard Dennis (profiled in Market Wizards) believed trading could be taught and that traders could be grown “like they grow turtles in Singapore” (hence the name of their students, ‘turtle traders’). His partner Bill Eckhardt thought you either had it in you or you didn’t. “Trading was more teachable than I ever imagined,” Dennis reminisced. “It was teachable beyond my wildest imagination.”

Is success in markets a question of innate qualities or can it be taught? Nature or nurture? Anyone wrestling with the Midwit Valley hopes for nurture. Learn, improve, and achieve mastery. But then you ponder someone like Buffett — a singular obsession with business, a photographic memory, and ice in his veins when it comes to markets. The legendary players are outliers. In the 1980s, two Chicago traders asked themselves the same question: nature or nurture? They made a bet, like in the classic Wall Street movie Trading Places. Could they teach a group of people their method and would they suc