A lot has been written and spoken about legendary W.D. Gann, considered by some to be the greatest trader of all time. There's no doubt his now seminal work on market cycles and price behaviour is without equal. Gann is believed to have profited by over 50 million dollars trading the markets.

William Delbert Gann was born in Texas in 1878. He did not complete grammar school or attend high school, being under obligation to work on his family's farm.

Gann began his trading career working in a brokerage in Texarkana while attending business school at night. He moved to New York City in 1903 at the age of 25 and opened his own brokerage firm, W.D. Gann & Co.

In 1919 at the age of 41 Gann began publishing a daily market letter which covered both stocks and commodities and made annual forecasts. In 1924 Gann's published his first book, Truth of the Stock Tape. His market forecasts during the twenties have been said to be 85 percent accurate. Gann prospered during the Depression, which he predicted would end in 1932. He acquired seats on various commodities exchanges, traded for his own account, and wrote the Wall Street Stock Selector in 1930 and New Stock Trend Detector in 1936. He later moved to Miami, Florida where he continued his writings and studies up until his death in 1955 at the age of 77. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn at a location that looks toward Wall Street.

W.D. Gann's work, while very powerful, has until recently been beyond the comprehension of even the most experienced traders. This is primarily because his methods relied heavily on historical price data – more than one hundred years worth – and intensive analysis of that data to identify likely tops and bottoms in the markets.

Gann applied his methods to all markets including stocks, commodities, energies and currencies, and proved to be equally successful in all of them. He was hailed as a genius at the time. Even today there are very few analysts who have the ability to fully understand Gann's methods, and fewer still who can successfully apply these strategies to today's markets.

Gann Global Financial and James Flanagan

Without the computing power available nowadays, there is no way an individual or even a dedicated team of analysts could devote the time necessary to do the data analysis required by Gann who had six full time data analysts working for him.

James Flanagan is the president and founder of Gann Global Financial. In 1978, while majoring in economics at Claremont McKenna College, he acquired his first book written by W.D. Gann, “How to Make Profits Trading in Commodities.” This set in motion his passion to validate the claims of this early pioneer of market psychology and technical analysis.

After graduating in 1980, he began his career in the Los Angeles office of the futures brokerage firm Maduff & Sons. This was the home office of Sid Maduff who was one of the co-authors of the 'pork belly contract'*. This is where James also had the privilege of working with Phyllis Kahn who was one of the earliest and best known Gann practitioners.

* With the mention of commodity trading, 'pork belly futures' often come to mind. In 1961 the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) pork belly contract became the first futures contract based on frozen, stored meats. Trading in CME Frozen Pork Bellies contracts was developed as a risk management device to meet the needs of meat packers and inventory owners who had to contend with volatile hog price swings. This contract remains a favorite of aggressive, highly speculative individual traders.

During the following ten years James Flanagan worked as a stock and commodity broker, finishing his career at Dean Witter in 1990.

In April of the same year, he launched his first newsletter: Past Present Futures which has been in continuous publication since that time.

For years during the 1990s James Flanagan had a live daily television show on the Business Channel in Los Angeles. He has been quoted by, or has contributed to, virtually every type of financial publication and news service including CNBC.

James Flanagan oversees all of the research and research development at Gann Global Financial.

Major breakthrough with Gann's studies and methods

A 10-part video by James Flanagan about Gann's method has recently been released and is already being hailed as breakthrough work. James and his team have managed to do two things that very few have been able to until now:

By being able to quickly 'crunch the data', they have been able to apply the resulting analysis to any market: stocks, commodities, energies, currencies etc.

Anyone already familiar with the work of W. D. Gann knows how exciting this is. And for those new to Gann, James' information will save countless hours of study and frustration.

Watch the 10-part complimentary video entitled Stock Market Forecast 2006-2007: W.D. Gann's Time Periods and Master Time Factor.

It's almost an hour long in total, but packed with solid content that will teach you more about Gann's methods.

Here, you can get a Free Educational Tutorial for Traders.

Commodities

A commodity is any physical substance, such as food, grains, and metals, which is interchangeable with another product of the same type, and which investors buy or sell, usually through futures contracts. The term is used more generally to refer to any product traded on a commodity exchange; this would also include foreign currencies and other financial instruments and indexes.

The price of the commodity is dependant on supply and demand factors. Risk is actually the reason exchange trading of basic agricultural products began. For example, a farmer risks the cost of producing a product ready for market at sometime in the future because he doesn't know what the selling price will be. A speculator can pay the farmer or anyone else producing commodities because the speculator wants to make a profit. This is called trading in futures.

The following is a list of commodities available for futures trading:

• Agricultural: grains, oils, livestock, wood, textiles, food products

• Metallurgical: metals, petroleum, chemicals

• Interest Bearing Assets: T-bills, bonds, notes

• Stock Indices

• Currencies

When it comes to commodities, most traders tend to focus on energy markets. Crude oil is by far the most consumed commodity on the board.

But traders who have recently been following the best performing commodities know that the Grain complex has been the "place to be."

What's been happening in the Grain markets? James and his research team have done the their homework. They've studied the historical records for the biggest movers and shakers in our current market situation. After watching Crude Oil spend a couple years in the driver's seat of the commodity board, the market known as "black gold" has recently given up the spotlight to the Grain Markets.

We recently received a copy of James Flanagan's latest forecasting video titled, "The Next Glamour Commodity". There is a special page to view this 21 minute video which is complimentary.

Finally, here's a free report "Sneak Peek at the Next Bear Market in Stocks, which you can read at your leisure.