…we do not know. From all the published information I’ve had access to, it seems to me that Gann probably took his last secret to his grave. And what could that be? Perhaps the method to know with almost 100% certainty the price of the next important high or low and on what day it would occur.
So why do I often speak highly of WD Gann, praising his methods? Because what I have learned from the information that is available to us today, secret or not, has opened the door to several fantastic and incredible discoveries of my own.
Credit should be given when it is due. If legends like WD Gann did not publish what they did, regardless of whether their motive was purely for profit or partly altruistic, it would have made many current discoveries or understandings of market behavior much more difficult to come by.
When we read about the exploits of WD Gann, we are reminded of his remarkable early 20th century Wheat call before a writer for The Ticker and Investment Digest. We are reminded that he had the ability to turn a small amount of money into a much larger amount in a short period of time.
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“One of the most amazing calculations made by Mr. Gann was during the last summer [1909] when he predicted that September wheat would sell for $1.20. This meant that he had to touch that figure before the end of September. At twelve o’clock Chicago time on September 30 (the last day) the option was selling below $1.08 and it looked like his prediction would not come true.
Mr. Gann said: ‘If it doesn’t touch $1.20 at the close of the market, it will show that there is something wrong with my whole method of calculation. I don’t care what the price is now, it must go there. It is common history that September wheat surprised the entire country by selling at $1.20 and no more in the last hour of trading, closing at that figure.”
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“During the month of October, 1909, in twenty-five trading days, Mr. Gann transacted, in the presence of our representative, two hundred and eighty-six transactions in various stocks, both on the long and short sides of the market. Two hundred and sixty and four of these transactions resulted in profit, twenty-two in loss.”
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The fact that WD Gann is a legend is indisputable. His popularity continues to grow year after year. And with such exposure, with myth and fact intertwined, debates continue as to whether he got rich trading or selling books and courses. In fact, debates over whether he died rich to begin with continue unabated.
I am convinced that, in fact, WD Gann had many of the secrets to forecasting the market’s highs and lows, and that he did not reveal the most powerful ones. And I’m also convinced that he shared enough information, albeit scattered in metaphors, that anyone serious enough about the company can get enough to improve their market timing skills several times over.
My conviction was first of logic. You see, if WD Gann got rich trading or selling books and courses he doesn’t take anything away from his genius. It is a fact that WD Gann was selling courses and seminars that cost the price of a single family home in those days. Only a man of recognized genius could pull it off. Who today, praised in the commercial industry, can put together a seminar or course for the price of a house? No one.
Now, while this logic helped convince me of WD Gann’s legitimacy, it also helped me at least take his works in print seriously enough to get something out of them. And boy was that the right move!
Over the last 6 years I have tracked down much of what I could get on WD Gann and his teachings. I’ve read his economics books, as well as his extensive (and more expensive) trading course. I have searched the web top to bottom looking for bits and pieces that I could find. Bottom line: this man was indeed a genius.
I’m pretty sure what I’ve gleaned from my research is only a fraction of what the man had to offer. Maybe someone out there has locked up the last whispers of a dying genius. Who really knows? But for what I have collected, in its obviously limited amounts, it was enough to open so many amazing doors for me in the field of market analysis and forecasting that I will forever be indebted to Mr. Gann and others like him.
The Gann Wheel, also known as the Square of Nine, is an amazing tool. It has been sold and oversold for years. Many ignore it as nothing more than a useless product to put money in the pockets of those who sell it. Oh, what foolishness abounds! Although I have long since moved beyond using this forecasting tool, it opens your mind to the amazing mysteries of the universe. It is as if everything around us could be explained with mathematics, since each thing seems to be related to another.
Oh, I can get poetic for a long time about this. But I’m sure you’d prefer me to stay on point. With the Square of Nine, you can, with a fair amount of practice, get to the point of making many forecasts with incredible accuracy. You may not know the exact price of wheat or live cattle for a particular day. But then maybe you can. I have found the tool to be a good complement to working with prices to arrive at a set of support or resistance prices for a given day, rather than standing on a soap box and stating with certainty that corn will go to 205 and not a tick more. It would be nice to know that kind of information, but it is not necessary to make a profit on the trade.
In my arsenal for forecasting the markets there are several tools that are used to forecast time and price. Each one I have a different level of confidence in. Over the years I have learned to use all the tools at the right time under the circumstances to make many incredible market forecasts. Of course, my goal is to achieve 100% accuracy with 100% consistency. Without such a goal, I would just sit on my hands and the discovery would stop for me personally. While reaching such a goal would be considered by virtually everyone to be impossible, and perhaps so, you should never convince yourself of that if you wish to stand out beyond the masses.
WD Gann had his secrets and probably died taking some very good ones to the grave with him. And we know he wasn’t 100% accurate with 100% consistency because we read that he won x amount of trades out of y trades. An amazing achievement, even it’s not 100% perfect. But I have no doubt that WD Gann once thought that he would not be able to achieve that lofty goal. To achieve any real success requires that you believe you can achieve the impossible. In reality, nothing is impossible to achieve. Usually only two things stand in the way of achieving the end goal; you and the time
If you believe, you can achieve it. Only TIME cuts the shorts of course. We just run out of time and die, and that’s what happened to WD Gann. If WD Gann were alive today, he would be that much closer to accomplishing the impossible. Any one of us who believes that the goal is attainable and puts aside any negative thoughts of failure, who strives to support the thought, will achieve much, but will eventually be interrupted by TIME. But it’s no reason to give up.
Every time we collect the great works of a legend like WD Gann, we help extend his time. We take what we get from Gann and others like him and move it forward toward the ultimate goal. As we earnestly and sincerely study and investigate, we open new doors of discovery for future generations if those new discoveries, in whole or in part, are shared. This sharing can be distributed in fragments among many books and perhaps seminars. Whether the motive for sharing is for profit or for altruistic reasons, each piece of the puzzle will contribute to the overall puzzle that could one day be yours.
Perhaps WD Gann didn’t die with his secret after all, as it may be what he’s encouraged all along…never stop learning and believing.
