One of the things that you come to realize after studying Gann for even a short amount of time is that he never actually put down the tools he used to trade markets. So he would describe a general method of looking at the market, but would then use incorrect data or incorrect application of the tool in his examples. The idea was not to teach the method itself, but to show the general thought pattern required to rediscover the method. This is why so many “experts” can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Gann, including what he had for lunch on any given day of the week, but yet still can’t trade their way out of a wet paper bag using his tools. It’s because they memorize the example, but not the reasoning behind the example, and end up continuously duplicating something that doesn’t work.

I suspect most of the readers of this magazine are familiar with Gann and have at least a cursory knowledge of the Square of Nine. Aside from Gann angles, the Square of Nine is perhaps the tool that Gann is most famous for. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Square of Nine is simply an arrangement of numbers in a particular visual pattern. So you start with “1” in the center, move to the right for “2”, up for “3”, and spiral around the center over and over. A small example is shown below. in Chart #1.