Is Goodman Wave Theory the only way to make long-term profits in the markets? Not at all. Charlie Goodman said it often himself, and this post looks at some of the other 1-2-3 trading methods worth knowing.
There’s More Than One Way
I hope I do not give the impression in this journal that Goodman Wave Theory and the Goodman Method of Trading are the only way to achieve long-term market profits. Yes, I’m a firm believer in the 1-2-3, and that Charlie put it all together in an incredibly consistent and harmonic manner. But he said often, “There’s more than one way to skin the market cat!” And “Whatever works is what you want to do!”
Trading Hours and Lunch in Hawaii
In Hawaii most of the commodity markets were closed by 11 AM. I loved the Hawaii trading hours; they were perfect for both futures and FX! After the close I’d do paperwork, talk story with the brokers for a little while, then do lunch and head home for a nap. “Party Time,” at least while I was still single, ran from about 4 PM to 9 PM.
Lunch was usually a bento plate from Shirokiya’s, or tako poke and lomi lomi salmon from Tomashiro’s fish market. Sometimes I’d grab a ham sandwich double-stack from the Lynn’s Deli in the Ala Moana shopping center.
A Trader in Kalihi
This day my pal, local guide and muse Ryan came by and suggested we do teriyaki burgers from M & M Burgers on King Street. We’d pick up the burgers, fries and sodas and head up to the top of the Old Pali road. Ryan would turn off the engine of his little TR6 and we would slowly coast down the road in silence, enjoying the burgers and the gorgeous scenery.
Byron asked if, after we ate, I would meet a friend of his. “He’s developed his own commodity trading system. Right now, he’s paper trading it and doing really well. Soon I think he will open a test account with you. He explained the charts to me but I don’t understand that stuff. But I see lots of 1-2-3s and think of you and Charlie!”
After eating we drove to his friend’s house in Kalihi, just mauka (west) of downtown Honolulu. His friend was Indochinese; I think Laotian, but not certain. Ryan made the introductions, and his friend led us to his small and very cluttered study.
Long story short: his friend had basically rediscovered the old Taylor Trading Technique from George Taylor. After he showed everything to me, I suggested he get a copy of Taylor’s book for comparison. Actually, I thought his approach was a little simpler than Taylor’s, but he had an odd little equation he ran using open, high, low and close. Something like (Open/Low + Close/High) / 2. I was never a fan of such things, but “Whatever works is what you want to do!”
The Most Popular 1-2-3 Methods
The most popular 1-2-3 methods, of course, are Trident by Georgy Lindsay, the Symmetry Wave Trading Method by Michael Gur, and The Trading Rule That Can Make You Rich by a really cool guy, Ed Dobson. There are others, less known, such as 1-2-3s the Right Way! Obviously, the trunk effort was by Bertrand Pugh in his Science and Secrets of Wheat Trading. That’s where Charlie started. To me, they all seem to have a piece of Goodman Wave Theory, but just not assembled in the wonderful fashion Charlie did with GWT.
If you want more on Taylor, here is a nice introduction. It appears his book was republished about ten years ago; I do have a copy of the original in my library. This website describes it quite well. Taylor’s own writing is tough to decipher, IMHO.
Windsor Books and the Pre-Computer Era
From the 1940s through the 1970s (“BC,” Before Computers) there were dozens and dozens of such systems and methods, mostly privately published in very small quantities. Charlie had a large collection of them that I was supposed to get when he left to trade harp futures (another story), but someone else got them. In the 1970s there was also a publisher who sold system and method books: Windsor Books. Most of them are trash, but there are a few nuggets among them. Search eBay, Amazon and Abe Books for them. I believe a couple dozen were published over 10 to 15 years.
Good Trading!
Michael Duane Archer
Related Reading
- The Goodman Wave Theory Paradigm in a Nutshell
- The Goodman Smoothie: A Mini-Lesson on the Goodman Method
Keep Learning the Goodman Way
If this article was useful, these are the next steps:
- The Method: propagation, intersection and the 3-C Principle, drawn plate by plate.
- The Goodman Library: the books, from Goodman for Grasshoppers to The Goodman 6 & 6.
- The Trader’s Playbook: the Molokai setup in one printed, numbered volume.
- Mentoring: work one-on-one with the authors.