Gann Time Cycles

Gann’s central claim about time was that turns arrive at fixed counts rather than at proportions of whatever move preceded them. The counts come from the circle and the calendar: the quarter (90), the third (120), the half (180) and the whole (360), the master number 144, and the seasonal counts of 30, 45 and 60.

This is a genuinely different proposition from Fibonacci time analysis, and the difference shows up in the tool’s design. A Fib Time Zone needs two clicks because its lines are multiples of a unit you drag out. These counts are absolute, so the tool takes one click — scaling them to a dragged range would destroy the only claim the method makes.

Gann counted in calendar days for long-term work and in bars for shorter horizons, and the two are not interchangeable. The tool supports both explicitly.

“90 days” projected as ninety bars lands roughly four months late on a daily chart, because weekends and holidays are absent from the bar series. Getting this right is the difference between a tool that names a date and one that drifts.

1. 1
   Click the pivot

   A significant high or low — the bar the count starts from. That is the whole placement. The lines run the full height of the chart because a time cycle is a date, not a price zone.
2. 2
   Choose the unit

   Bars for intraday and short-horizon work; calendar days, weeks or months for swing and position analysis. The unit changes what the counts mean, so set it before reading anything off the lines.

Gann’s counts recur. If 90 bars marked a turn, 180 and 270 are the next candidates. The Harmonics setting repeats the whole set — 2× draws each count and its double — so the second and third cycles are reachable without retyping every multiple.

Repeated counts are drawn dashed and lighter, and counts that collide are drawn once. 2 × 90 and 1 × 180 are the same line; drawing both doubles the stroke and makes the line count in the property sheet wrong.

• A cycle line is a date to watch, not a signal. It says a turn is due, not which direction. Pair it with price structure — a level, a trendline, a divergence — and trade that.
• Allow a window. Gann’s own work treats a turn within one or two bars of the count as on time. Demanding the exact bar means missing most of the hits.
• A cycle line that passes with no reaction at all is information: the pivot you counted from is probably not the one this market is working off. Try the adjacent extreme.
• Two counts landing on the same bar — 90 from one pivot and 144 from another — is a cluster, and clusters are where the method’s hit rate lives.
• Counts that historically produced turns on this instrument are worth more than counts that are theoretically stronger. Check backward before projecting forward.

• 1.How to Make Profits in Commodities — W.D. Gann (1942)
• 2.The Tunnel Thru the Air — W.D. Gann (1927)
• 3.Gann Angles — StockCharts ChartSchool
• 4.Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets — John J. Murphy (1999)