Turtle Trading System

Turtle trading for commodities such as heating oil futures: enter on 50-bar highs or lows on 180-minute charts, exit at the 10-bar opposite extreme.

Published · Updated · Methodology: Technical Indicators

Part of: Algorithmic & Automated Trading

  • Methodology: Technical Indicators
  • Content type: strategy
  • Timeframes: 180 minute bar chart
  • Markets: Commodity markets, Heating Oil Futures, Agriculture, Energy, Metals

Indicators used

  • Trend Length (Longer)
  • Trend Length (Shorter)

Source video

Decoded from: My #1 Favorite Algorithmic Trading Approach! | Turtle Trading System | Best Algo Trading System by Peak Trading Research — watch the original

Key timestamps:

  • 0:00 - Introduction to the strategy
  • 1:40 - Turtle Trading System Rules
  • 2:45 - Turtle Trading System Full EasyLanguage Code Logic
  • 4:00 - Chart Trading in the Heating Oil Market
  • 4:27 - Performance Statistics

Strategy overview

The Turtle Trading System is the trend-following program from the 1983 Richard Dennis and William Eckhardt experiment: enter on a break of a longer-lookback extreme, exit on a break of a shorter one, with size scaled to volatility. That pedigree makes it an unusual subject for a strategy video, because the rules were published long ago and nobody owns them — so the interesting content of any particular version is not the entry condition but the porting decisions layered on top of it.

This entry, decoded from Peak Trading Research's "My #1 Favorite Algorithmic Trading Approach! | Turtle Trading System | Best Algo Trading System", is chaptered as exactly that kind of port: rules first, then the full EasyLanguage code logic, then a chart, then statistics. EasyLanguage is the load-bearing detail — it is TradeStation and MultiCharts' language, so "the code" here is platform-bound, and moving it anywhere else is a rewrite rather than a copy. The record keeps the classic two-lookback frame (one longer trend length, one shorter) but places it on a 180-minute bar chart, an intraday container for a system whose canonical form ran on daily bars. That substitution is a re-tuning, not a translation: shorter bars produce more breakouts, a larger share of them false, and commissions and slippage weigh more heavily against the smaller moves being captured.

The demonstration market is Heating Oil — one contract in the energy complex — and the video closes on a performance-statistics chapter. Worth holding in mind: the original Turtle results came from running the same rules across a diversified basket of futures at once, so a single-market chart shows the mechanics but not the portfolio property the system was designed around. Intraday futures testing also depends on how the continuous contract is stitched across expiries, since back-adjustment shifts historical price levels and therefore the exact breakout points a lookback rule fires on. No rule set was extracted for this entry, so what this page carries is the concept and the source's framing rather than a decoded breakdown; the record's methodology reads Technical Indicators, its indicators are the two trend lengths, and the timeframe is the 180-minute chart. The "#1 Favorite" and "Best" in the title are the channel's own preference, not a measured claim.

Topics

turtle trading system · algorithmic trading strategy · commodity trading strategy · momentum trading · breakout strategy · 180 minute strategy · technical indicators · pine script · tradingview strategy · heating oil futures strategy · energy trading · metals trading · agriculture trading · swing trading · futures trading strategy

Frequently asked questions

What is the Turtle Trading System?

It is a trend-following breakout system from a 1983 trading experiment run by Richard Dennis and William Eckhardt, who taught a group of novices a mechanical rule set. Entries come from breaking a longer-lookback price extreme, exits from breaking a shorter one, with position size tied to market volatility. The rules were later published, which is why many public versions exist.

How does this version differ from the original Turtle rules?

The most visible difference in this record is the container: it sits on a 180-minute bar chart, whereas the classic Turtle formulation operated on daily bars. It keeps the two-lookback structure — a longer trend length and a shorter one — but running that structure intraday changes signal frequency and makes transaction costs a bigger share of each trade.

What is EasyLanguage, and does the video show code?

EasyLanguage is the scripting language used by TradeStation and MultiCharts. The source video devotes a chapter (at 2:45) to walking through the system's full EasyLanguage code logic, which means the version shown is tied to those platforms — porting it to Pine Script, MQL or Python is a rewrite, not a copy-paste.

Why does the video demonstrate on Heating Oil specifically?

The chart chapter uses the Heating Oil market as a single worked example, followed by a performance-statistics segment. A one-market demonstration is useful for seeing how the entries and exits behave on real price, but it cannot display the diversification across many futures markets that the original Turtle program relied on. Strategy Decoder catalogs entries like this one so you can see the concept, source and structure before deciding whether to test it yourself.

About this strategy page

This trading strategy was decoded by Strategy Decoder's AI from a public YouTube trading video and turned into a structured, reviewable specification. In the interactive app this page shows the full entry and exit logic, risk management settings, the indicators involved with their parameters, AlgoWizard-compatible logic and a Pine Script export ready for TradingView backtesting — plus an automated backtest verdict when one has been computed for this strategy.

Strategy Decoder catalogs 2,229 decoded strategies. Each one is extracted with confidence scoring, cross-linked to the indicators it uses, and kept up to date as new videos are processed daily. Load this page with JavaScript enabled to use the interactive tools, or start from the strategy explorer to filter by methodology, market and timeframe.

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