Turtle Trading

[driller]

I just finished The Complete TurtleTrader by Michael Covel. I know a little about the stock market, but nothing about technical trading.

After reading the book, I found that this is a very well known thing; it's all over the internet.

But now some questions:

The original turtles were supposed to follow very strict rules. As a group the turtles averaged about 80% ROI over a 5 year period. Then the program was terminated. The money the turtles made was a serious amount of money: They were given up to a million to trade with.

Why didn't Dennis and Eckhardt just program computers to make the trades?

In the book, Covel describes what happens to the various turtles after the program ends. He says that the one's that were successful were the one's that in addition to being good traders were good businessmen, etc.

If the rules enable you to make 80%/year, why do you need to do anything else besides trade?

80% is way more that Buffet ever made. Has he just been wasting his time on all that fundamental stuff?