William Eckhardt: The man who launched 1,000 systems

When Bill Eckhardt left the University of Chicago and foresook his nearly completed PhD in mathematical logic in 1973, he did not abandon his educational pursuits; rather, he focused them on a myriad of disciplines that supported his research in creating trading systems.

Eckhardt launched his own commodity trading advisor (CTA) in 1991, which has produced a compound annual return of 17.35% over 20 years and earned 21.09% in 2010. In addition to building trading systems, Eckhardt has developed a science of trading and written academic papers on the philosophy of science. Here, we discuss his scientific approach to trading.