Was W.D. Gann a Trading Master or a Big 'Ole Fraud?

I will let you decide

January of 2020 was my first introduction to W.D. Gann. I was working with a trader friend of mine and he asked if I had ever heard of him. I honestly hadn’t. I had heard hundreds of astro-related names mentioned by my husband years before I even got into the study of astrology, but had never heard W.D. Gann mentioned. Once my friend started talking about him, he couldn’t stop, and most of our conversations moving forward were about Gann’s secrets and strategies and trying to “crack the code”, bible numbers, numerology, gematria and anything else that would break this amazing revelation hidden in Gann’s writing.

The trader friend mentioned here is actually a fantastic trader. His chart has many similarities to mine actually. We both are Leo risings and have Jupiter ruling the 8H of trading/other people’s resources. The interesting part though, is he made his biggest gains using his own intuition and astrology that related to his own personal chart, not cracking the Gann code. I was in his office one day and he was showing me a huge move he caught in US Steel that netted him several thousand dollars in less than an hour. The trader intuition was already there, and the astrology we were able to help him inculcate was the cherry on top. So why did he/does he still chase the ever-elusive Gann Miracle Secret?

I think part of it is the thrill. Trading is monotonous and quite boring. I did scalping day trades to start, and you make small incremental, gradual gains, which is great, but is is slooooow going. It certainly doesn’t look as sexy or attractive as being a master magician with math secrets that dub you “the greatest trader of all time”. It’s mind-numbing, mundane monitoring of the stock market for the most part. Or if you are only into crypto, a terrific amount of waiting. (Like purchasing Dogecoin in 2017 and capitalizing on its moon 3 years later. That’s like an eternity in trader world. The investing world is a different story, and people improperly conflate the two, but that’s another talk for another day.)

So back to the point. Was W.D. Gann a con artist or a master trader? Well, let’s start at the beginning shall we?

I have read extensively about W.D. Gann. I have researched his methods, tried to loop through his mental gymnastics, etc. He taps into legitimate and important work (though none of it is actually his. He didn’t actually discover any of it.) Magic squares, sacred geometry, gematria, numerology, astrology, all of these esoteric topics he compiles have been around for millennia. Even his coined “Gann Angles” are just co-opted from magic squares and sacred geometry, only applied to the stock market. I will give him that he was one of the first to apply these techniques to the stock market, but his followers speak as if he discovered all of this wonderful esoterica himself. The problem is, just like when you try to apply astrology broadly to the market, even if you know a date is important, it’s often difficult, if not impossible to suss out the specifics of that transit. Astrology is arguably much more precise even than just the math/angles themselves because they can better outwardly describe what might happen, given that the planets are all represented by themes and archetypes.

Moving on, I tried to find unbiased information about his life that didn’t come from either his own self-reporting or those that are part of his seeming cult, or those that were out to “destroy his reputation” and there isn’t much out there. His estate has really tamped down information available about him, which just leaves opinion pieces which can’t really be trusted. There is a lot of “I heard”, “I remember”, “It is said” type comments out there, but not a lot of cold hard facts. Supposedly, there was a time when W.D. Gann sat for a month in front of auditors to prove he could make money, and he supposedly turned a few dollars into thousands in one month. This was apparently recorded back in 1908, but the records have since been “lost”. (Because of course they have.)

In W.D. Gann’s book New Stock Trend Detector, which I read just after the dumpster fire that was Tunnel Thru the Air, I can’t say I found much that impressed me. It was basic advice. One of his predictions from that book was that the DOW would never pass the 1929 high. That was a spectacular flop. What makes that prediction so incredibly substandard is that he could not have been using astrology to come to that conclusion. I then somewhat question the methodology he used to come to his conclusions.

So since his history is murky, and since his estate has been sold as a business transaction to a couple who knew how profitable it could be to sell all of his books, courses and papers to gullible and vulnerable traders, we then have to look at the history that never lies: the birth chart.

W.D. Gann emphatically states that his birth time is accurate, so let’s take a little looky-loo at his chart to see what it says about him!

He is a Leo Rising (just like my trader friend and I) so there is definitely an emphasis put on the 8th house in a positive way with it being ruled by Jupiter in a day chart. The OOS malefic is tucked away into the 12th which is typically a good place for Mars to be tucked away, however the ruler of the 12th is in the first house, and it is conjunct Uranus. This combined with Mars’ presence in the 12th would indicate enemies that would cut away at him, somewhat unpredictably. It can also represent self-destruction.

Next we look at his 2nd house, which indicates how someone makes money. For the greatest trader that ever lived, we would expect to see some correlation of the 2nd house with the 8th, and there isn’t one.

For instance, Warren Buffet is considered one of the greatest investors/traders of all time, and take a look at his 2nd/8th house. The ruler of his second house is in the 2nd house. HE MAKES MONEY FROM HIS OWN MONEY. Not only that, he was born just a week and a half before Saturn stationed direct, which means over his lifetime, his secondary progressed Saturn would make its way to its direct station. His wealth was slow, over time, and he was rewarded handsomely for the work he put in. Additionally, he had Pluto conjunct Jupiter in his 8th house. This is a signature of someone who is extremely lucky with other people’s money. Not just that, but the ruler of his 8th is in his first, signaling that his entire identity would be wrapped up in being a trader, or handler of other people’s money.

In my humble opinion, Warren Buffet’s chart is the most perfect example of a successful trader’s chart.

Let’s get back to W.D. Gann. The ruler of his 2nd house is in the 10th house. This would for sure indicate that money would be part of his career. In contrast to Warren Buffet’s chart however, Gann has Mercury conjunct Pluto, not Jupiter, and they are in his 10th, not 8th, which vastly changes the interpretation. Someone who has this stellium I would expect to be fantastic at speaking and/or writing. Given that Mercury is the ruler of the 2nd, I would expect this person to make good money from these endeavors. And, according to many reports, near the end of his life, Gann was charging $5,000 for his courses. (Just so you know, that is about $50,000 in today’s money.) Hard to believe that someone who was making such good money trading would need to charge such exorbitant fees for his work, but no judgement yet.

We can also see that he has Neptune and Venus conjoined in the 10th as well. Venus is the ruler of his 10th, so her conjunction with Neptune would indicate that the topic of Gann’s work would be pretty freaking out there, and it was. At the time, the people that weren’t part of Gann’s cult were constantly trying to discredit him. The 9th house of astrology ties into this as well given that he claims to have been an astrologer. Saturn is present in that 9th house whose ruler is placed in the 12th house of secret enemies, which could explain why so many people disliked him for his claims.

Now, the ruler of his 8th being in the 7th would mean that he likely relied heavily on his spouse for both financial support and/or help with his work. I say that because the ruler of the 7th is in the 9th house of astrology and higher learning. He mentions his wife often in his books. Who knows, it could have been her idea for him to become a peddler of his ideas as opposed to trading, since according to his son, his trading wasn’t cutting it, as far as their finances were concerned.

This brings up another topic which is the conversation that his son had with a reporter years after his death. His son more or less outed him as a fraud and said he made his money from courses and classes. Many argue this point and say that his son was just angry that he was cut out of Gann’s fortune. It’s possible that the ruler of his 4th house being Mars in the 12th, could indicate that he has secret enemies within his own family. Yet, a begrudged son only out to smear his good father’s name for cutting him out of his will, would have most likely tried to get part of his father’s incredible fortune back by suing for it. There are no records of court cases of any of his family trying to sue for money that is rightly owed to them. This seems to be a pretty weak link for that argument.

Given the extraordinary lack of genuine information about WD Gann, the only truth I have to present is what he gave us in one of his first books, which is his birth chart. From his birth chart I would conclude that Gann was a very successful author/teacher who earned his affluence from selling products.

Perhaps people really do know that, and continue to defend him because they are trying to follow in his footsteps of presenting themselves as incredibly successful traders only to peddle their workshops, classes and books. Nearly every website I came across that vehemently defends Gann either has some translation of his works for sale, some multi-part course, or a boatload of books “revealing the secrets of Gann”.

This didn’t exactly engender confidence that he was the “greatest trader of all time” and definitely puts more stones on the side of perhaps “greatest swindler of all time.”

In conclusion, be wary of crooks. They’ve always been there, but the internet has made their jobs much easier. There are so many better people to follow. Honestly, if you are truly interested in learning more about how to apply astrology to finance, first get to know your own chart. Then, follow astrologers who are doing fantastic extended planetary cycle work. Some of my favorites are @nickdaganbest, @spiralcal, @pwatsonastro (of course 😊) and anyone who has been studying astro for a long time. Someone who just picked it up recently is likely not in a position to understand the complexity of longer term cycles, but that’s where the magic really is.

I can’t tell you for sure who WD Gann was, all I can tell you is the birth chart don’t lie.

Happy trading!

- Beth