Richard Dennis closes shop -- again.

After coming out of his first retirement to form Dennis Trading Group (DTG), Richard Dennis once again has decided to close shop, further evidence of the difficult times gripping the managed futures industry.

One Sept. 29, Dennis along with Kenmar Holdings, the firm that raised assents for DTG, decided it was in everyone's best interest if DTG ceased trading and liquidated customer accounts at the end of October.

"DTG was 50% down in June but then made a slight recovery in July," says Burt Hozloff, president of Select Advisors LLC, which handles client relations for DTG. "But we finally broke through the 50% mark to 52% You still can trade and try to recover when you're down 50%, but you run the risk of falling to 60% or 70%, and there's no turning back from there."

DTG, which began trading in May 1994, had $79.5 million under management in early October, over $230 million less than the $310 million in had in August 1999. Despite a 27.8% return in January, DTG had only one other positive monthly return for 2000, an 89% return in July. DTG posted a -36.7% year-to-date return through Sept. 30, 2000, after a 10.6% loss for the month. The firm ended 1999 down 10.28%.

Dennis was to continue managing funds until the end of October. After that time, remaining assets were to be transferred to Beacon Management Corp.'s Meka program. The Meka program uses a technical intermediate- to long-term trend-following approach. The program was down 0.40% in September and has a 12.27% year-to-date return. It closed down 28.18% in 1999.

The trading approach of DTG differed from the methodology Dennis employed in his earlier trading in that it was a purely systematic approach; no discretion was used. Dennis, a well-known and respected futures trader, retired the first time from trading in 1988. That venture, Dennis & Co., used a combination of systematic and discretionary trading and also had a string of considerable profits before experiencing large losses. He than started DTG in 1994 using the systematic methodology.

While Dennis hasn't made any decision if this will be his last foray into managed futures, he is the latest big name to exit the managed funds business.

"It's been a tough year because of the lack of trends," Kozloff says. "Some might disagree and say look at oil, but that isn't a trend. They are rapid price spikes, not trends, and these rapid price spikes hurt everyone who follows trends."