This article is about Larry Williams who wrote a book I have read and became interested in financial markets. Someone knows him someone not. Someone likes his trading style someone not. This article will tell you about a person who made a lot of money trading futures. His trading was based on Commitments of Traders reports and I suppose the most Larry Williams’ well known achievement in trading was in 1987 when he made $1.1 million from $10000 during a year. Therefore I recommend you to read about this person.

Larry Williams short biography

Larry Williams was born in 1944 in a usual American family. His father worked at oil production factory and Larry spent his childhood in a small town in Oregon. What similar to many successfully people Larry Williams had? He was a goal seeker and hard worker – he started to work at the factory. In 1964 he obtained a bachelor degree in journalism, no finance, no economics or math.

Larry Williams (COT trader): the path to financial markets

The first job Larry had (after factory) wasn’t a brokerage company, it was a corrector position in an advertising agency in New York. Does not sound superb however being a usual boy from a small town he managed to finish university and get to New York, later to Wall Street.

Of course, he was not satisfied with a corrector position and went away to Oregon where established own publishing office and started to publish The Oregon Report. Newsweek topics were connected with politics and economics. That’s where Larry Williams became interested in financial markets.

How Larry Williams became famous?

Larry have traded for more than 40 years and continue doing it. Sometimes he can be found in Barrons, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Money, Fortune. of course he became especially popular in 80s-90s when he was young, fresh and ready to fight.

In 1982 he wrote a book “How to Prosper in the Coming Good Years”, he managed to predict a bull market and extremely fast US economy growth. Most analysts spoke about economy stagnation that’s why he became famous.

Of course he became famous not because of one luck. In 1987 he participated in Robbins World Cup Trading Championship, in which managed to increase his deposit up to $1.1 million having only $10000. The same profitabily was achieved only by W.D. Gann.

In 1997 Larry Williams again managed to make a good profit participating in this trading championship: he increased his deposit from 50k to 1 million which means that yield was more than 2000%!

Larry’s deserts

Well, Larry is a good trader who takes into account (as all good traders) fundamental factors and not only technical analysis. he created a lot of indicators which are based on COT reports, as well as some price based indicators. Most popular are: WILLCO, ProGo, Williams %R.

He thinks that prices change because of some circumstances and events. Therefore it is impossible to predict price movements basing on historical data. You can see what happens now and make a prediction on what may happen in the market basing on nowadays situation.

Larry Williams created many indicators which are used in intraday trading. Although he disrespect such trading style and even if he agree that intraday trading can bring you profit in long-term it destroys you and you life.

His books: “How I Made a Million Dollars Trading Commodities”, “Sure Thing Commodity Trading”, “The Definitive Guide to Commodity Trading, Volume One and Two”, “Long Term Secrets to Short Term Trading” and others.

Non-trading activity

Larry Williams is not only a trader, he was (maybe still is not sure) a member of National Futures Association, which was found by CFTC. Larry represented Commodity Trading Advisors.

Additionally he tried to get to the Senate but he was not so lucky. Markets were easier than politics. By the way one of his hobbies is archaeology and he made several expeditions to Saudi Arabia.

His daughter Michelle Williams is a quite famous actress.