In “The Complete TurtleTrader” I tell the story of seeing Jerry Parker’s original office outside Richmond, Virginia for the first time. Just finding the place was an adventure. While Richmond was only ninety miles from my house and I had a street address, there were no MapQuest turn-by-turn driving directions available around 1994. I used a good old-fashioned hard copy map from AAA. While I got down to the general area in ninety minutes, I spent another two hours in rural Virginia trying to find his office.
Finally, I stopped into a local country bank and asked if they had ever heard of Parker’s firm Chesapeake Capital (remember, I had no appointment to visit Chesapeake, I was just dropping in, hence I did not know where I was going). At first I was met with blank stares in the bank, but then one lady said that Chesapeake might be a ‘mile up the street’. She was right. Upon reflection I was struck by the fact that while she kind of knew where Chesapeake was located she had no clue what they did. She was probably making $35,000 a year (nothing wrong with that), but at the same time Jerry Parker was literally a baseball throw away making $35 million a year. While I might sound manic, my first thought was just to shake her and say, ‘don’t you get who is working down the road? Forget teller jobs, go be an intern for Parker!’
I did not meet Parker that summer day. My first face to face did not come until December 1995 at Parker’s new suburban Richmond office (about 18 months later). I had pestered him for an informational interview for some time, and finally his assistant Jonathan Craven responded with the good news that my persistence had paid off. Parker’s private office was surprisingly barren except for a small glass turtle on his desk. We talked about Wall Street in general terms.
Yet before the allotted 30-minutes was up, I did capitalize on the face-to-face opportunity by looking at Parker straight in the eye and asking for confirmation of who had won the Barings Bank sweepstakes earlier in the year. My proffer of a ‘name’, garnered a raised eyebrow, but his one word answer was confirmation. In that instant much of my understanding of trend following trading was solidified.
Later, the broker Parker recommended had me over to his suburban Richmond, Virginia home for chili. This broker was a transplanted Chicagoan who was clearly enjoying financial success in the Deep South (I remember his cool indoor pool). He was a broker archetype: a down to earth, everyman. At one point he mentioned that Parker had given pointers to one of his distant ‘relatives’ in trend following (the relative was by way of a distant marriage). It would be years before I knew he was talking about second generation Turtle Salem Abraham (who is in my book).
My path did not cross Parker’s again for years, long after the website TurtleTrader.com was established. For this visit, Parker, John Hoade, Keith Byers, his IT head and I met in his conference room at his Forest Avenue office. The furnishings of his sparse conference room gave no indication of what Chesapeake Capital did except for a huge Swiss alphorn leaning against the wall. Its ‘thank you’ engraving to Parker and Chesapeake Capital from a Swiss ‘concern’ spoke volumes about his firm’s reach.
Why the meeting with me to begin with? Chesapeake Capital was a billion dollar fund at the time, but they still wanted fresh ideas. They were investigating whether the Internet could enhance their business, and if so, how to best use it. Our meeting must have given them some good food for thought because shortly thereafter Parker sought to acquire the domain trendfollowing.com from me. It was a wise move not to part with it, since that domain name became a catalyst in launching my first book ‘Trend Following’ four years later.
Parker’s firm today has no web presence to speak of, but that has not hurt them. He is still far and away the most successful Turtle by a long country mile.
More to come.
