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BOOK REVIEW
secret knowledge, and there is no other information 'just as good' that tells you what the markets will do. I don't boast of the past. I tell you what the markets will do in the future." From the EBook OROLO by the Gann Study Group That’s quite a marketing claim pretty well unmatched to this day. So what to make of The Thirty Second Jewel? Well, firstly it’s more an entire course in Gann methods rather than just yet another book. It’s as thick as perhaps four paperbacks and you need muscles to carry it around. It contains some 33 chapters, not totally surprisingly as Gann himself was a Freemason. What of these chapters? So, the first eight are dedicated to the early history of panics in England during the 19th Centenary, then follow up with chapters on Fibonacci, Elliott Wave and then even a lesson on critical thinking skills. Then the first Gann chapter, No. 8, finally introduces Gann's trading rules. It’s only at Chapter 9 that the Gann narrative and new material really begins. First, we have introductory material, on music, Euclidian geometry and even non-Euclidean geometry. This obviously is set to act as a primer for the later part of the book. For many, what is truly unique about this book is the information that can be gleaned from the recovery of Gann's suitcase, which provided first-hand material not written in that veiled coded language. The stories and rumours of that suitcase have swept around the Gann world for many years. The elusive case was handed by Gann to Elinor Smith, his pilot for many years, after their last flight together. So this book also has a narrative, in particular the journey of discovery and recovery of that Elinor Smith suitcase and then the reveal: what precisely did it contain? Then comes the story of W.D. Gann, the Freemason. The entire story is like a real Sherlock Holmes novel, or something from the Da Vinci Code, and you have to hand it to Connie on her courage and worldwide travels in the quest for this knowledge. So what was in the suitcase? I will leave that for those who read the book, but just to say it's obviously related to the further material that follows in the later chapters. Apart from the Gann story, we also have his methods and in Chapter 16 we find the elusive "Law of Vibration" explained, though it still needs to be developed. But what of the secrecy and veiled language? Did you spot something strange about that pen name of "OROLO"? It’s in the next chapter that Connie reveals how the "Law of Vibration" is hidden in his novel The Tunnel Thru the Air and, in doing so, shows the basis of Gann's coding methods. The book also looks at those time cycles and indeed how "Harmonic Time" is constructed, which I have not seen as
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well explained anywhere else. The Ancients appear to have had a very different understanding of time to the one we have today - perhaps more like J. W. Dunne's Theory of Time, more elastic and not quite as linear as we view it today. Indeed Quantum Physics can seems to be able play all sorts of games with space and time. What we can conclude is that Gann used more than the standard solar time as we use it today. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the book is Gann's use of planetary harmonics by the use of angles and aspects, planetary lines etc. I know many view this as magic, and nothing to do with technical analysis, but clearly it was part of Gann's predictive techniques and hence deserves to be included. You can choose to use it or not depending upon your views. We have the more geometric approaches that Gann invented (or more properly rediscovered) including "squaring price and time", "squaring the range" and "squaring highs and lows". Just these techniques can fill an entire book, even if seemingly missing from Euclid. So amongst all this complex harmonic geometry, are there any easy wins? (Or as some have suggested by the time you have completed all this complex Gann analysis, had the opportunity to trade been lost?) Well, Chapter 31 is the quick win for me. That 10-year computer modelled T-Note chart looks highly accurate, so much so that - provided it continues to hold - it alone is worth the price of this book. Then we have the "twist", the revisit of the 19th Century English past that was outlined in the first chapters. Is this volatile past again to be part of our future? Maybe when the Gann wheel turns again? Indeed perhaps so.
So, in conclusion, this is a massive volume, the most comprehensive work I have ever seen on W.D. Gann. Indeed it is destined to become the definitive Gann bible of our time. But it’s more that. It is well written and its narrative carries both the story of a quest for Gann knowledge and an explanation of his methods. This is the book that finally opens the suitcase to Gann’s world and his secrets. Those methods the ones that he veiled and hid in his books. In truth, it will appeal to those analysts who are already captured by the story of this extraordinary man, his strange language and his methods in the analysis of markets. It’s a Sherlock Holmes story of our time.