📖William Gann

Risk-First Approach

🌿 Intermediate★★★★★

Consider the downside before the upside.

💬

Before considering how much you can make, consider how much you can lose. Risk management is not about avoiding risk entirely, but about understanding and controlling it.

— 45 Years in Wall Street,1949

🏠 Everyday Analogy

Risk control is like a seatbelt. It does not make the ride faster, but it keeps you alive when conditions suddenly turn against you.

📖 Core Interpretation

W.D. Gann treats survival as the first objective. Limiting permanent capital loss, controlling leverage, and avoiding single-point failure are prerequisites for long-term compounding.
💎 Key Insight:Risk management is about understanding, not avoidance.

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❓ Why It Matters

A single large drawdown can erase years of progress. Risk control is not timidity; it is the operating system that keeps compounding alive.

🎯 How to Practice

Define downside scenarios before entry, cap position size, avoid fragile leverage, and maintain liquidity so mistakes remain survivable.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Equating volatility with all forms of risk
Oversized positions without an exit plan
Using leverage to compensate for uncertainty

📚 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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