Russell Sands is not one to retire into his shell. A native New Yorker, a former professional gambler, a commodity-futures trader, he's a man who knows his own mind and doesn't like to be crossed.
Nevertheless, he is a Turtle. He's one of a select group of wannabes hired in 1983 and 1984 by famed futures trader Richard Dennis, who settled a bet about whether trading was a teachable skill or an innate talent by gathering 23 novices at his Chicago office and teaching them everything he could about this own highly successful trading methodology.
'We're going to grow traders just like they grow turtles in Singapore,' Mr Dennis told his business partner (and betting opposite) after having been impressed by the huge vats of squirming chelonians he'd seen while touring a turtle farm.
Richard Dennis won the bet, and Russell Sands gained a vocation.
Before being tutored in the Turtle style of trading, which relies heavily on game theory and probabilities, Mr Sands had supported himself by playing backgammon and blackjack (and claims to have been good enough to get himself barred from most of the casinos in Las Vegas).
Since then, Turtle credential in hand, he has earned his living by trading his own and clients' money on about 50 futures markets around the world and by teaching seminars on the secrets of Turtle trading. This last line of work has reportedly earned him some enmity, not only because Mr Sands bailed out of his own Turtle apprenticeship less than halfway through but also because some former colleagues feel he has commercialised a system he had no part in developing.