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Larry Williams

Larry Williams (b. 1942): trader and educator, winner of the 1987 World Cup of Futures Trading with a documented +11,376% in twelve months of real money. Williams %R, COT analysis and seasonality.

On this page

World Cup Championship of Futures Trading, 1987: from $10,000 to over $1.1 million in one year, on a verified real-money account — the record stands to this day.
Period b. 1942
Lens Short-term futures trading
Eponymous tool Williams %R
Key works How I Made One Million Dollars… (1973); Long-Term Secrets to Short-Term Trading (1999)

Who he is

Portrait — Larry Williams

Active since the early 1960s, Williams is the rare educator with a publicly verified result: the 1987 World Cup win with over 11,000% on real money, under the organisers' eyes (his daughter Michelle won the same contest ten years later using her father's techniques). Around that peak, sixty years of operational research: indicators, short-term patterns, government report data, seasonality — always with the obsession of measuring rather than asserting.

Contribution

  • Williams %R — a momentum oscillator related to the Stochastic: where price closes relative to the recent range, on an inverted 0/−100 scale.
  • The COT as an informational edge — among the first to use the Commitments of Traders report systematically: reading the positions of the commercials (those who actually use the commodity) against the public.
  • Seasonality and calendar patterns — days of the month, holidays, expiry cycles: measurable regularities to combine with the technical setup.
  • Real-account honesty — real-money contests and inspectable track records: a standard of proof the education industry rarely meets.

What today's students learn from him

  1. Every idea is judged by its measured expectancy over a sample, not by anecdote: his career is a catalogue of tested hypotheses.
  2. The +11,376% of 1987 was achieved with contest-grade size: Williams himself recalls that the curve contained ferocious drawdowns — returns are never judged apart from the risk taken.
  3. Data "outside" the chart (positioning, seasonality) are legitimate technical ingredients, if treated with the same statistical rigour.

Study path

In preparation — This entry will be extended with %R, the COT reading and the documented short-term patterns. The basics: backtest and expectancy.

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