Wd Gann Courses Better ❲Must Watch❳
| Aspect | Rating |
|--------|--------|
| Concept originality | ★★★★★ |
| Practical usability today | ★★☆☆☆ |
| Learning resources | ★★☆☆☆ |
| Risk of misinterpretation | ★★★★☆ (high) |
| ROI for time invested | ★★★☆☆ (only if you persist) |
Should you buy a Gann course?
Gann was undoubtedly a brilliant market observer, but his courses are like an ancient map – the territory has changed, and the symbols are strange. For most traders, modern cycle analysis (e.g., Hurst) or even simple trend‑following will deliver better results with far less headache. However, the few who “get” Gann often describe it as unlocking a hidden dimension of the markets. Tread thoughtfully.
In the sweltering summer of 1954, a failed cotton farmer named Arthur Penderly scraped together his last $750—a year’s wages—and mailed it to a return address in Manhattan. The return name read simply: WD Gann, Wall Street.
What arrived two weeks later was not a book, not a pamphlet, but a small, locked wooden box. Inside: seven lessons printed on onion-skin paper, each page watermarked with a compass rose. A handwritten note said: “Commit Lesson One to memory. Then burn it. Then write me what you saw in the fire.”
Arthur, then 32 and sleeping on his brother’s sofa in Tulsa, laughed. Then he lit a candle.
Lesson One contained no charts. No tickers. No “buy low, sell high.” Instead, it was a parable about a Babylonian merchant who lost his fortune three times—and each time rebuilt it by mapping the shadow of a sundial across a clay tablet. Gann had annotated the margin: “Time is the only true price. The sun does not repeat, but the shadow does.”
That night, Arthur dreamed in numbers. 7, 14, 21. 90, 180, 360. He woke up and, without understanding why, sketched the 1929 Dow Jones Industrial Average onto translucent drafting paper. He overlaid the 1954 calendar. Two curves touched at a single point: October 29, 1929 – October 29, 1954. Exactly 25 years. Exactly 300 months. Exactly 9,125 days.
He wrote Gann: “I saw a double bottom across decades.” wd gann courses better
The reply came by telegram, three words: “Lesson Two arrives.”
Lesson Two was a set of geometric stencils and a single command: “Find the square root of panic.” Arthur spent three weeks calculating the percentage drops of every major crash since 1837. He normalized them, squared them, then plotted the remainders. They formed a spiral. At the center of the spiral: a 22.5-degree line that bisected every crash exactly 33 days before it began.
He didn’t believe it. So he tested it on the 1946 bear market. The spiral predicted a low on May 17, 1946. The actual low was May 16. Off by one day.
He wrote Gann: “This isn’t analysis. It’s alchemy.”
Gann replied with a photograph of himself at age 19, standing next to a railway telegraph tower. On the back, in fountain pen: “I decoded the train schedules first. The market is just another railroad. Every car arrives on time.”
By Lesson Four, Arthur had stopped eating dinner. He lived on coffee and the conviction that he was decrypting a secret bible of finance. Lesson Four contained no text—only a single vinyl record. When played at 33 1/3 RPM, it produced a woman’s voice speaking numbers in Latin: unus, duo, tres, quinque, octo, tredecim. Fibonacci. But the voice skipped on tredecim (13). It repeated: tredecim, tredecim, tredecim.
Arthur slowed the record to 16 RPM. The voice became a man’s—Gann’s, he was certain. “Thirteen is the gate. Not twelve. Not fourteen. Thirteen steps between the high and the promised land.”
He checked the 1929 high: September 3. Count forward 13 weeks: December 2. The market’s first major rally after the crash began December 2. He checked 1937: high March 10. Thirteen weeks later: June 9. The exact low of the 1937 panic. | Aspect | Rating | |--------|--------| | Concept
His hands shook. He wrote no letter. He simply bought a round-trip train ticket to New York.
Lesson Six arrived before he could leave. It was a deed. To a plot of land in Galveston, Texas, purchased in 1908. The deed’s coordinates, when read as minutes of arc, matched the latitude of the New York Stock Exchange building. Gann’s note: “I buried a copper box here in 1909. Inside: the 1929 forecast. Dig it up. Or don’t. The math works either way.”
Arthur never dug. Instead, he took the remaining lessons—seven in total, though Lesson Seven was simply a mirror—and began trading. In 1955, he turned $3,000 into $87,000 in six months. In 1956, he lost $40,000 in three weeks because he ignored Lesson Three: “Never trade on the day after a solstice. The angles lie.”
He died in 1992, wealthy but unknown, in a mobile home outside Amarillo. Among his possessions: the locked wooden box, the copper deed, and a journal whose final entry read:
“Gann was wrong about one thing. Time isn’t a price. Time is a mirror. You stare at it long enough, you don’t see the market. You see the person you became trying to measure it.”
The mirror from Lesson Seven was never found.
W.D. Gann’s trading techniques are renowned for their focus on the relationship between time and price, often using geometric and mathematical models to forecast market turning points. Finding the "better" course depends on whether you seek original historical materials or modernized, simplified applications. Types of W.D. Gann Courses
Not for:
To understand why WD Gann courses better is a difficult search, you must first understand the "Gann Paradox."
Gann was a master salesman. In the 1920s, he sold courses like The Basis of My Forecasting Method for thousands of dollars (adjusted for inflation, nearly $50,000 today). However, Gann was notorious for writing in a cryptic, almost coded language. He used parables and biblical references to hide specific mathematical formulas.
The Conundrum: Many "original" courses are simply raw scans. They list angles and squares but skip the psychological mindset required to draw them.
A better WD Gann course does not just give you the charts; it gives you the decision tree—when to trust the angle and when to ignore it.
Before declaring Gann’s courses universally “better,” consider these significant challenges.
1. The Subjectivity Problem: Unlike a simple moving average crossover (which is unambiguous), drawing Gann fans and squares is highly subjective. Two competent Gann students can draw completely different angles on the same chart. This subjectivity leads to “curve fitting”—adjusting your lines until they explain the past, which offers little predictive value for the future. A “better” course would teach falsifiable, repeatable rules.
2. The Opaque Language and Mysticism: Gann wrapped his techniques in biblical numerology, astrology, and esoteric geometry. While intriguing, this language often obscures simpler underlying concepts. Many modern educators have reverse-engineered Gann’s work to show that his angles are often just trendlines on a log scale, and his cycles are derived from simple harmonic patterns. A course that requires you to study ancient calendars before placing a stop-loss may not be “better” for a busy, practical trader.
3. The Backtesting Paradox: It is remarkably easy to make Gann tools look perfect on historical charts. Given any past market swing, you can find a Gann angle, a time square, or a cycle that “predicted” it. But forward-testing Gann methods in real time is notoriously difficult. Very few third-party, audited track records exist of pure Gann trading. In contrast, modern courses on order flow, volume profile, or even simple trend-following can be backtested and automated. Gann was undoubtedly a brilliant market observer, but
4. The Opportunity Cost: Gann’s original courses are dense, arcane, and require years of study to achieve basic competence. Is that “better” than spending three months mastering supply/demand zones, risk management, and trading psychology? For most traders, the answer is no. The market doesn’t reward complexity; it rewards consistency and risk control.
Some courses focus heavily on the numerology and astrological aspects of Gann (Squaring time, planetary cycles, Hexagon charts).