The first was the son’s criticism of astrology and astronomy as a means of technical analysis. John worked at his father’s company both before and after the war however, they ended up parting ways over two major disagreements. One of them was his falling out with his son John L. 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.Īlthough it seemed like everything was going his way, he did have some personal worries. Whether or not his extravagant spending was why he ended up divorcing his second wife in 1937. At this point, he was in his early 50s, and he made several luxury purchases, including several private airplanes and cruising boats. He also started making impressive profits from his educational material. Gann’s Later Yearsīy the mid-1930s, William Delbert Gann had both earned a reputation for his trading acumen.
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. Of course, what he’s best known for is his educational material. Gann isn’t known to have made any such claims himself. Some view the fictional war in the book as a prediction of WWII and Japan’s attack on the US. One notable example of the latter is The Tunnel Thru the Air, published in 1927.
His work ranged from technical manuals where he outlined his trading methods in great detail to sci-fi novels. Starting with his 30-page essay, Speculation A Profitable Profession in 1910, William Delbert Gann would write many books. As an aside, it’s interesting to point out that a year later, he divorced his wife and married a woman 10 years younger. 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. It’s also sometimes referred to as the Knickerbocker Crisis. This three-week financial crisis resulted in massive bank runs that heavily strained the liquidity of NY City banks. Gann & Company ended up prospering.Īllegedly, one of his most notable successes was predicting the panic of 1907. 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. He started out trading stocks & commodities on Wall Street. Around this time, he married his first wife, with whom he had two children. In the meantime, he continued to learn and improve his trading by attending night classes at a business school. Later he moved to Texarkana, where he got a job at a brokerage firm. The cotton warehouses he worked at also taught him a great deal about commodity trading.
He learned to read & write from the Bible. As the oldest of 10 siblings, he spent most of his youth working on the family farm with little to no formal education. Gann was born the son of a farmer in 1878 Texas.