Richard Dennis. The story of a boy who became a millionaire

At the beginning of their journey, many famous traders faced the problem of lack of capital.

Having studied the literature and participated in stock exchange trainings, everyone comes to the conclusion that only initial large capital will help ensure a rich life when achieving positive trading results. 

From a mathematical point of view, this is true, but the story of Richard Dennis shows that determination and skill in your business, even with little capital, can bring in millions of dollars.

Richard Dennis is Native American and was born in Chicago in 1949.

Richard felt his first taste of defeat on the stock exchange at school, because at such a young age he had already started working as an ordinary messenger on the stock exchange floor, where he was paid $40 a week.

Seeing the active activity of famous traders, he himself wanted to try himself in this business, so he began to secretly trade with his meager salary.

Richard remembers these days with a smile and tells how he lost his salary literally in a matter of hours, but according to him, this is just a small payment for the experience gained, which could have been much more. Having settled down as a consultant, he begins to take his first steps, but there was an age limit on the exchange, which he managed to get around by registering his father as a trader.  

What is the depth of this whole story?

Young Richard Dennis, having gained a little experience, decided to try himself as a free-floating trader. As you know, in order to get a trading place on the stock exchange, it was necessary to make a down payment of $1,200.

However, Dennis did not own this money, so he borrowed 1600 dollars from all his relatives and friends, of which 1200 was paid for the place, and 400 remained in his management.

Richard was a very talented trader and by the age of 25 he had earned his first million. Trading futures came so easily to him that they began to call him the “King of Futures”, because if a rumor spread that Richard intended to buy this or that asset, it immediately began to rise in price. As you understand, such talent could not go unnoticed by a number of investors, so Richard Dennis founded his Drexel Fund and for 20 years successfully managed it and brought profit to his investors.

Unfortunately, the typical mistakes of greed and lax discipline in 1987 led to the failure of the fund, as Richard and investors suffered heavy losses due to high-risk transactions. This turning point hit him so hard morally that he simply closed the fund and gave up managing investor funds forever.

The most interesting thing is that 14 employees who strictly adhered to his own trading strategy ended the year with a plus, but the losses caused by Richard offset all the achievements of his subordinates.

Many years of thinking about his mistakes and searching for solutions to optimize his trading strategy continued for six years, after which Richard again entered the stock exchange as a disciplined trader. The first year was not the most profitable for him, and his increase was 8 percent of the capital, but in subsequent years his figure grew over 100 percent per annum.

The story of the turtles.

Among themselves, traders nicknamed Richard and called him Coach Turtles. The story is banal and funny. As a successful trader, he bet with his colleague that he could train a person from scratch in the stock exchange business, so that he could bring in money. His opponent argued that a simple person without intuition will never be able to make money on the stock exchange and no training will help.

As you can imagine, the bet was made, and Richard recruited 23 different trainees into his office and began training them. The result of the experiment was simply phenomenal, since this team was able to earn over 250 million dollars, and Richard outfoxed his opponent.     

The life story of Richard Dennis shows us that with just $400 in your pocket you can achieve unrealistic heights, and his experiment with interns confirms the words spoken in dozens of books that anyone can make money on the stock exchange.