Chesapeake Capital: Run by Original Turtle Jerry Parker
October 10, 2005
Financial World
July 5, 1994, Page 42
The Wall Street 100
Call it the year of the hedge funds. For this elite band, it was the best year ever.
By Stephen Taub and David Carey with Andrew Osterland and David Yee
No. 25 R. JERRY PARKER JR.
Chesapeake Capital
At least $35 million
Richard Dennis’s ex-pupil is outshining his teacher. During the early 1980s, Dennis, the legendary Chicago futures trader, hypothesized that he could "grow traders just like they grown turtles in Singapore." Seems he once observed turtles being raised to be sold as pets while he was there on vacation. So Dennis opened a school in 1983, and Parker, then a 25-year-old accountant, was admitted to the first class. He fumbled his first few trades but soon absorbed Dennis’s trend-tracking system, and by 1988 he was trading for clients. And whereas Dennis’s own luck of late at enlisting and keeping clients has been poor, Parker now oversees more than $700 million of assets from the offices near Richmond, Va. In 1993, Parker, who besides Dennis counts himself as a disciple of Marty Zweig, posted net returns of more than 61% in each of his two large funds. His biggest score came from going long on Italian bonds.
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Financial World
July 4, 1995, Page 48
The Wall Street 100
Compensation was way down in 1994 for Wall Street’s highest earners
By Stephen Taub, David Carey, and Joseph Epstein
No. 28 R. JERRY PARKER JR.
Chesapeake Capital
at least $17 million
A dramatic rise in coffee prices and an uptick in metals spared this futures trader from the shellacking that many hedge fund managers took last year. While the hedge meisters tended to stick with interest-rate-sensitive financial futures, Parker played the field. "We’re comfortable trading anything, and diversification was a key to our performance," says Parker, whose largest fund registered a healthy 15.9% net gain. Parker learned the ins and outs of futures trading from Chicago’s legendary Prince of the Pits, Richard Dennis. Reckoning that he could "grow traders just like they grow turtles in Singapore," Dennis opened a trading school in 1983, Parker, working as a low-paid accountant at the time, was admitted to the first class. He began trading for clients in 1988 and now runs close to $1 billion in outside investors’ money from offices near Richmond. A native of Lynchburg, Va., Parker, 37 is proud of his rural roots. And man, does he love that country music!
A proud product of the "Virginia boondocks" who grew up in Lynchburg, Parker loves country music and says he prefers to "keep as far away from Wall Street" as he can.
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Financial World
October 21, 1996, Page 60
The Wall Street 100
By David Carey and Stephen Taub
No. 25 R. JERRY PARKER JR.
Chesapeake Capital
At least $35 million
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