Last Updated on June 19, 2020
William Delbert Gann was a stock and commodity trader in the early- to mid-20th century. He’s best known for developing methods of technical analysis that include using geometry and astrology to predict the financial markets. His most famous techniques are Gann Angles and the Gann Fan. He wrote a great deal about his trading techniques, which have been the subject of much debate and criticism. Despite that, many of them are still in use today. Most traders familiar with his approach dismiss these outlandish techniques outright, but some swear by them. Rather than evaluate the methods themselves, it may be worthwhile to examine the story of the man whose mind they sprang from. If for nothing else but to provide an entertaining distraction for a few minutes.
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The Early Life of William Delbert Gann
Gann was born the son of a farmer in 1878 in Texas. As the oldest of 10 siblings, he spent most of his youth working on the family farm with little to no formal education. He was a self-taught man. He learned to read and write from the Bible. The cotton warehouses he worked at also taught him a great deal about commodity trading.
Later, he moved to Texarkana, where he got a job at a brokerage firm. In the meantime, he continued to learn and improve his trading by attending night classes at a business school. Around this time, he married his first wife, with whom he had two children.
W.D. Gann & Company
His real trading career began in 1903. He started out trading stocks and commodities on Wall Street. It didn’t take long before he stopped trading for others and opened his own firm the same year; the new brokerage, named W.D. Gann & Company, ended up prospering.
Allegedly, one of his most notable successes was predicting the panic of 1907. This three-week financial crisis resulted in massive bank runs that heavily strained the liquidity of NY City banks. It’s also sometimes referred to as the Knickerbocker Crisis.
There were rumors that William Delbert Gann managed to make a tidy sum of profits due to the crisis, although this hearsay was never confirmed. As an aside, it’s interesting to point out that a year later, he divorced his wife and married a woman 10 years younger.
William Gann’s Writing
Starting with his 30-page essay, Speculation: A Profitable Profession, in 1910, William Delbert Gann would write many books. His work ranged from technical manuals, where he outlined his trading methods in great detail, to sci-fi novels.
One notable example of the latter is The Tunnel Thru the Air, published in 1927. Some view the fictional war in the book as a prediction of WWII and Japan’s attack on the US. It’s worth noting, however, that W.N. Gann isn’t known to have made any such claims himself.
Of course, what he’s best known for is his educational material. These include the Wall Street Stock Selector in 1930, New Stock Trend Detector in 1936, and How to Make Profits in Commodities and How to Make Profits Trading In Puts And Calls, both published in 1941.
Gann’s Later Years
By the mid-1930s, William Delbert Gann had both earned a reputation for his trading acumen and started making impressive profits from his educational material. At this point, he was in his early 50s and made several luxury purchases, including private airplanes and cruising boats. Whether or not his extravagant spending was why he ended up divorcing his second wife in 1937. After the divorce, he continued to focus on his trading and writing, eventually earning a spot on the Chicago Board of Trade in 1941 and later marrying his third wife in 1944.
Although it seemed like everything was going his way, he did have some personal worries. One of them was his falling out with his son John L. Gant in the 1940s. John worked at his father’s company both before and after the war; however, they ended up parting ways over two major disagreements. The first was the son’s criticism of astrology and astronomy as a means of technical analysis. The second was more personal in nature. Apparently, he strongly disapproved of his father marrying a woman 30 years younger.
William Delbert Gann eventually sold both his trading company and the publishing rights to his works and moved to Florida. There, he spent the rest of his life teaching trading courses for prices of up to $5,000; by today’s standards, that would be around $50,000.
William Delbert Gann’s Legacy
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, many of Gann’s methods are still used today: Gann Angles and Gann Fans in particular. However, neither his personal life nor his professional work was entirely free from controversy. Although he’s credited with a history of highly accurate predictions, according to his son, he could not support his family with his trading. Instead, his primary income was said to be from his exorbitantly priced trading courses.
On the other hand, it’s also fair to point out that much of this criticism is supported mainly by an interview with his son, who is known to have been on bad terms with his father. At the same time, it’s also entirely plausible that his legacy is being heavily embellished by profiteers trying to sell his courses even today. As for how good the trading techniques of William Delbert Gann are, we may take a closer look at them in the future. For now, here’s our advice on using financial astrology: don’t base your trading decisions on your horoscope.
