What Did W.D. Gann Believe About Astrology?

William Delbert Gann (1878–1955) was one of the most successful and controversial traders of the 20th century. Born in Lufkin, Texas, he began trading in the early 1900s and over the following decades built a reputation as one of the greatest forecasters in market history.

Gann’s methods were geometric, mathematical, and astrological. He developed a system based on the relationship between price and time — arguing that markets move according to natural law, and that these laws could be expressed mathematically and predicted in advance. His tools include the Gann Angles (particularly the 1x1 or 45-degree angle), the Gann Square, and the Square of Nine — a spiral-shaped calculator that relates price levels to time cycles and planetary positions.

He wrote extensively on markets and trading, producing books including "Truth of the Stock Tape" (1923), "The Tunnel Thru the Air" (1927) — a novel widely believed to contain encoded trading and astrological insights — and "How to Make Profits in Commodities" (1941).

Gann believed that planetary cycles were the underlying cause of price cycles. He studied the movements of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and other planets and correlated them with market turning points. His view was not mystical in the traditional sense — he framed it as natural law, arguing that just as the tides respond to lunar gravity, markets responded to celestial mechanics.

Specifically, Gann worked with:

• Saturn cycles: Gann considered Saturn’s roughly 28-30 year orbit particularly significant for long-term market cycles. Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions were key timing events.
• Mars cycles: Used for shorter-term trend changes and reversals, particularly in commodities.
• The Square of Nine: A mathematical tool that converts price to degrees and back, allowing Gann to find planetary price levels — the exact price where a planet’s degree corresponded to a price level on the chart.
• Heliocentric vs. geocentric positions: Gann worked with both. He was aware that different vantage points produced different timing signals.

He encoded much of this in symbolic language throughout his books, using biblical references and fictional narratives to obscure the underlying methodology. This was deliberate — Gann believed that if his methods became widely known, the edge would disappear.

Gann’s most famous call was his prediction of the 1929 stock market crash. According to accounts from his contemporaries, Gann forecast the crash in advance — identifying the timing using his planetary cycle analysis.

The prediction is documented in the trading press of the era. Gann reportedly identified 1929 as a major cycle top years in advance and positioned accordingly. After the crash, he published analysis explaining the planetary configurations that, in his framework, made the event predictable.

Was astrology the reason? That’s genuinely uncertain. Gann’s system combined planetary timing with geometric price analysis and pattern recognition. It’s impossible to isolate which element of his methodology drove the call. What’s not in dispute: he made the call, and astrology was a central element of the system he used.

Gann’s deliberate obscurantism created a lasting problem: his methods are genuinely difficult to reconstruct, and much of what is sold as "Gann method" today is incomplete or misunderstood.

The technical elements — the angles, the squares — have been widely adopted by technical analysts who often don’t realize they originated in a system that was explicitly astrological at its core. The astrological elements have been studied by researchers including Bill Meridian, who has done quantitative work on Gann’s planetary cycle theories.

Gann’s legacy in financial astrology is therefore partially hidden: his most-used tools are now mainstream technical analysis instruments, studied by millions of traders who don’t know they’re applying the surface layer of a system that had planetary timing at its foundation.