📖William Gann

Quality at a Fair Price

🌿 Intermediate★★★★★

Seek quality businesses at fair prices.

💬

The ideal investment is a high-quality business purchased at a fair price. Quality compounds wealth; fair prices protect capital.

— 45 Years in Wall Street,1949

🏠 Everyday Analogy

Analyzing a business is like choosing a long-term partner. Temporary excitement matters less than durable character, capability, and consistency.

📖 Core Interpretation

W.D. Gann emphasizes durable business quality over short-term noise. A strong model, real competitive edge, and disciplined capital allocation matter more than quarterly excitement.
💎 Key Insight:Quality and fair price together create optimal investments.

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❓ Why It Matters

Without business-quality filters, investors drift toward stories rather than economics. Durable cash generation is what supports long-term valuation.

🎯 How to Practice

Use a checklist covering moat, management, unit economics, and capital allocation; track long-term cash generation instead of quarter-to-quarter noise.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Buying narratives instead of cash-generating economics
Overreacting to short-term operating noise
Ignoring management quality and capital allocation

📚 Case Studies

1
Cycle Repetition and Crash (1987)
Studying Gann’s time counts and seasonal patterns, an investor anticipated heightened risk around October 1987.
✨ Outcome:Bought protective puts and trimmed leveraged positions before Black Monday, limiting portfolio losses and reallocating into undervalued blue chips afterward.
2
Pre-Crash Market Timing (1929)
Gann applied his Price and Time Square to forecast the 1929 top in U.S. stocks, identifying price-time resistance in major industrials.
✨ Outcome:He reduced long positions before the crash, preserving capital and later buying at lower prices.

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