William Delbert Gann saw the market as having two axes: everyone watches price, he measured time. At the moment price and time balance, a trend is born — and dies.
Born in Lufkin, Texas, the eldest of a cotton farmer's 11 children. Instead of going to school he worked in the cotton warehouse, staring at the price board all day. He never finished high school — yet he came to know the Bible and numbers by heart.
At 24 he made his first cotton contract. Over the next six years, working at brokerages, he watched why thousands of traders were ruined: no knowledge, no rules, no patience. He began digging through decades of historical price data.
In October 1909 «Ticker and Investment Digest» watched Gann for a whole month: before a witness he made 286 trades, 264 of them — 92% — profitable. He grew his capital tenfold. The observer was the later-famous Richard Wyckoff.
In his 1927 novel «The Tunnel Thru the Air» he pictured a future war. In his annual forecast issued in November 1928 he foretold the September 1929 peak and the historic crash by time cycle — the peak came September 3, the crash in October.
In 1949, at 71, he wrote «45 Years in Wall Street». One of the first traders to fly a plane and study charts all his life. When he died in 1955, his angles, squares and cycles remained — built into every charting platform on earth.
1×1 = one unit of price per unit of time —the perfect balance of price and time. Above the 1×1, bullish; below it, bearish. 2×1 (63.75°) = a strong trend; 1×2 (26.25°) = a weak one.When one angle breaks, price falls to the next angle — like a staircase.
Arrange the numbers in a spiral from 1 and the square numbers (4, 9, 16, 25…) line up on one ray. Gann took the √ of a low, added 1 or 2, then re-squared to project the next resistance. A 90°, 180° or 360° turn = a natural price level.
Gann's two simplest and most powerful rules: the 50% retracement — the most important support(exactly matching Dow's principle), and anniversary dates: 30, 60, 90, 180 or 360 days after a major top or bottom, the odds of a turn rise sharply. The span from peak to peak repeats.
In the summer Gann declared: «September wheat will reach $1.20 before the contract expires». At noon on September 30 the price was $1.08 — it seemed impossible. Yet in the hour before the close it hit exactly $1.20 and closed there. Ticker magazine documented the case.
In the forecast he sent subscribers before 1929 began: «a historic top in September, then the greatest panic in history». The DJIA topped at 381.17 on September 3, 1929 and crashed in October —the time cycle came true to within a month.
After rising along the 2×1 angle for six months, price breaks its 2×1 for the first time and settles on the 1×1. How do you read it?
Price rose from 100 to 200, then fell back to 150. What does Gann teach you to do here?
Exactly 180 days after a historic bottom, price hits major resistance and prints a daily reversal candle. In Gann's terms, what is this?
Price alone is a trap. Gann waits for the square — where the 50% level and the cycle day meet. Click that point, and only that point.
Gann fan, Gann square, Gann box — they're on every platform today, yet who measure time as equal to price only a few use his true legacy.