Students who came to Gann for instruction were first sold a course on a mechanical trading system which he spent many years and thousands of dollars developing and testing, and which he used in one form or another in his own trading. In 1930 he published this method, and accompanied it with examples covering over 15 years of trading in US Steel. Only when students were able to trade successfully would he teach them his more advanced methods of forecasting.

A large difficulty which stands in the way of the modern reader who wishes to study Gann's writings is the absence of charts for many of his examples. It is truly said that one picture is worth ten thousand words. Until the late 20th century, Exchanges did not maintain price and volume data for markets electronically. While they probably have manual records from earlier periods, they have been unwilling to make it available.

Fortunately, data was published from day to day in the major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and these are available. It is a time consuming process to gather this data and enter it into a computer program, but the results are well worth the effort. Of course, most people don’t have the time to do such data collection, which of itself has little or no practical benefit.

But when Gann's lessons are followed on a price chart, a whole new meaning appears. Passages which seemed confusing make perfect sense. Furthermore, other information becomes apparent which would not be visible without a chart. So once the data was collected it was a logical step to find a way to make it available. With that in mind How to Trade Like W.D. Gann has been written.

In its original form this lesson is challenging to study, because there are no charts. But after compiling the price data and constructing a chart, it was amazing how his words came to life. There is a wealth of information hidden there, because 30 years of trading experience went into the writing of it.

This gave rise to more questions. Why did he act in one way at this point and another way at that point? This leads to a detailed study of Form Reading. The book does not give the final word on the subject, but it does endeavour to probe the mind of a great trader to see what he might have been thinking. Hopefully this will stimulate the reader to ask similar questions and come up with answers as well.

How to Trade Like WD Gann is now published by Sacred Science Institute in the USA. To purchase click here »