LARRY WILLIAMS

Williams was born in 1942 in Miles City, Montana, and started out as a writer before getting pulled into commodity markets in the 1960s. He was drawn to seasonal patterns — the idea that certain commodities move predictably at specific times of year based on supply and demand cycles.

He developed his own technical indicators including the Williams %R (a momentum oscillator that measures overbought and oversold conditions) and the Ultimate Oscillator. He entered the 1987 World Cup Championship of Futures Trading with $10,000 of real money and finished the year with $1,147,607.

The results were independently verified. He also ran for US Senate in Montana in 1978 as a Republican, losing narrowly to Max Baucus.

He has written over a dozen books on trading and runs an ongoing educational business. In the 1990s, the SEC brought action against him related to commodity pool operations, which he settled.

He's been frank about that episode. He divides his time between Montana and the Cayman Islands.

Williams has run his own trading operation throughout his career rather than managing outside capital in a traditional fund structure. His indicators — the Williams %R and the Ultimate Oscillator — became industry standards and are now built into every major trading platform without royalty payments to him, which tells you something about how early he developed them.

He also runs an educational trading business, teaching his seasonal and technical methods to retail traders worldwide. He's written and self-published much of his material, which is unusual for someone with his track record.

Williams is primarily a short-term futures and commodity trader. His edge has two components.

First, seasonality: commodities like corn, wheat, oil, and gold tend to move in predictable ways at certain times of year — harvest cycles, weather patterns, and demand rhythms create repeated setups if you know where to look. Second, technical indicators: the Williams %R tells him when a market is oversold and ready to bounce, or overbought and ready to fall.

He combines the seasonal map with the technical setup to find high-probability trades, executes quickly, and gets out. He's a market timer, not a buy-and-holder.

He looks for the setup, takes the trade, and moves on.

The 1987 World Cup Championship of Futures Trading. Real money.

Audited results. $10,000 turned into $1,147,607 in twelve calendar months — an 11,376% return.

He did this during a year that included Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones fell 22.6% in a single session — still the largest single-day percentage drop in US stock market history. Surviving and profiting through that year is not something that can be faked or theorized away.

The number is real.

Williams has been open about two categories of mistakes. The first is trading losses — the same leverage that creates spectacular wins creates spectacular drawdowns, and he's had both.

He's never claimed to be right all the time, and his earlier books include performance data across the full range, not just the highlights. The second is the regulatory action the SEC brought against him in the 1990s, related to how he structured and marketed commodity pools to investors.

He settled the case. The financial and reputational cost was significant.

He's addressed it in interviews and moved on, which is the only thing you can do.

Williams believes markets are more predictable than most people admit, because seasonal supply and demand cycles repeat every year. He thinks the efficient market hypothesis is wrong — not just slightly wrong, but demonstrably wrong, because seasonal patterns have generated profits for decades.

His core principle: find a statistical edge, define it precisely, and trade it without letting emotion override the system. He's also a believer in position sizing over stock picking — how much you bet on each trade matters as much as which trades you make.

Williams was born in 1942 in Miles City, Montana. His daughter Michelle Williams — born in 1980 in Kalispell, Montana — became one of Hollywood's most acclaimed actresses, earning multiple Academy Award nominations.

Another of his daughters won the 1987 World Cup Championship of Futures Trading in 1997, turning $10,000 into over $100,000 using his seasonal methods. The fact that the methodology was replicable enough for his daughter to win the same competition he did is either the best endorsement possible or a really good family party story.

Probably both.

Williams attended the University of Oregon. He worked as a writer and journalist before transitioning into commodity trading in the 1960s.

His trading education was entirely self-built — research, pattern recognition, and live market experience over decades.

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