# Kuppe "Lecture" Review



## Magdoran (7 July 2007)

wavepicker and I went to see a promotional “Lecture” on “WD Gann Building Blocks” in Melbourne, on the 4th of July presented by Glenn Kuppe covering Gann swing charts, “How to Square Price and Time”, and “The inside secrets of How to make fearless forecasts”.  All this for just under $2000 for a 2 day seminar…

See:  http://adest.com.au/seminars/free-gann-trading-lecture.htm 

Interestingly Glenn Kuppe is currently listed as being the “Chief Operating Officer” of Peter G Moloney & Associates, a Futures Broking firm based in Melbourne, and is described as “…a Forex dealer for several international banks; thorough knowledge of currency futures and a regular seminar presenter on options and futures strategies”

http://www.pgm.net/about/contacts.htm


Like the adage out of “Forrest Gump” - You never know what you’re going to get, and the bizarre things that can be said in these promotional events never cease to amaze me.  Well, this “Lecture” was no exception, read on…

So, what happened in the “Lecture”?:

The first half of the presentation was filled with all sorts of stories about the hardships of Kuppe’s parents, name dropping various Australian financial players, personal bragging such as an apocryphal story about making $2 Million for an unnamed bank or financial institution in a Forex arbitrage trade made in the 1980s, with his boss doing the reverse and losing $2 Million, and later sacking him in an internal political blame game to cover up his mistake.

When the actual technical component was finally presented much later, it looked like a very simplistic use of a Bowden like swing chart style and a rudimentary and incomplete version of McLaren’s pattern of trends (touching on the concept of “spacing” and counting of counter trends). The idea being that there are “fast” trends and “choppy” trends  - essentially McLaren’s concepts of “normal” trends and “creeping” trends (which Kuppe did acknowledge).

While he displayed an understanding of the importance of counter trends, he did not demonstrate an appreciation of how these factor in time cycles (although in a teaser I can see why one would not outline this, but the presenter could at least show an inkling of understanding this in order to establish credibility – I suspect the former – that he just didn’t understand this).

He also addressed in a very cursory fashion a version of time and price squaring along the lines of Bryce T Gilmour’s “Geometry of the Markets” (although when later asked specific questions didn’t know of Gilmour).  This involved a vertical measure of the price range from a high to a low, and then used this price extended out in days to find a time increment.  To me this did not inspire confidence since this method is highly problematic without a lot of knowledge supporting this technique.

It struck me as odd when someone is ostensibly offering a “Gann” course, that rather than trying to establish their capability as a Gann practitioner and clearly outline the contents of their course with sufficient detail in order to evaluate it, they focus the majority of the information “Lecture” on trying to appear to be a “good bloke”, and establish their credentials via an association with financial institutions in the past.

You would expect when attending public presentations on serious financial topics that a speaker would maintain a degree of decorum and project an image of competence, wouldn’t you?  Half way through this disjointed and rambling “lecture” Kuppe threw in the most amazingly crass “joke” about how trading the market was like “seducing a virgin” – not surprisingly, this little anecdote fell completely flat, and probably lost half the room (I noticed the women in the audience understandably squirming uncomfortably in their seats – not to mention some of the men too).

What I was expecting was a succinct outline of the course content, clear examples of the core course work, and a focus on which exact areas of Gann the presenter was drawing from, within a context of the different “schools” of interpretation.  This is because the body of Gann’s works can be divided into specific techniques and approaches; hence I wanted to know if the focus was on “geometric styles” or “astrological styles”, or both. 

If the content was on geometric styles, I wanted to know in detail which precise areas were going to be covered.  Since there was a mention of price and time squared, and a mention of time cycles, this was just too broad a comment without qualification, especially if you have to blindly outlay almost $2000 in order to find out which particular approach and interpretation the “lecturer” would be presenting.

My assumption being that any “Geometric Gann” presenter should be across a range of different geometric interpretations such as Bill McLaren, Bryce T Gilmore, Brad Cowan, and perhaps David Bowden (at least an idea of what his core approaches are – but understandable if one was reluctant to upfront thousands of dollars for each tiny morsel on techniques).

Kuppe was very evasive when asked precise questions, and was not prepared to outline the course content or structure in any detail other than a three line teaser and a few charts (fast and choppy trend charts, and a couple of swing charts).  He trotted out silly comments like “I use the triangle, circle and the square” which is just insulting.  Many of the revisionists I asked about he either did not know, or knew very little about.  His response was that he teaches “Glenn” school.

Needless to say, I was not impressed with what I saw. The whole thing was very short on actual information about the course, and most of this probably lasted around 15 -20 minutes in total spread out through the 2 hour period.  While Kuppe named dropped a lot, from what I saw, he was very light on for substance.  

He even claimed after the lecture to be better than Bill McLaren.  Well that did it for me, I saw no evidence of anything approaching the rigour or capability of McLaren at all, and to make such a sweeping claim when Kuppe clearly had glaring deficiencies from my perspective cemented my view that he was not anywhere near that class.


Regards


Magdoran


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## tech/a (7 July 2007)

Moggi.

How did the audience take to your questioning and the lack of response from the presenter?

While you have explained that you wish to be as skilled as you can possibly be with the methodology,I'm interested given your extensive backgound as to what it is that you think needs to be found?
What more could improve your knowledge,measurably beyond that which you have and those of the mentors you have chosen to follow?

Is it a search for perfection?
Do you believe that perfection CAN be obtained through analysis,or more in particular Time AND price?


Just interested.


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## Magdoran (7 July 2007)

tech/a said:


> Moggi.
> 
> How did the audience take to your questioning and the lack of response from the presenter?
> 
> ...



The reason I went along was because I’ve been busy preparing for an international relocation, and I hadn’t been to anything outside of this with wavepicker for a while, and since he found this presentation and suggested coming along, in part to evaluate it, I thought I’d take a break and catch up with him...

So I went along with an open mind to see what was on offer out of curiosity.  Like I said along the Forrest Gump line – “life’s a box of chocolates”…

The audience I think did not react well to the presenter’s “blokey” humour, and the fairly low brow delivery, but then again I’m biased here.  Out of those that did stay around, when I finally did ask some questions and the presenter became agitated, evasive and aggressive, I think they started to ask their own questions too.  

My mission was to raise some genuine points of clarification since all the key areas of interest to me were not covered in the 2 hours, so my intention was not to spoil the show – I think the presenter did that all by himself.

As for my personal endeavour to improve – well, that’s ongoing, and I’m making breakthroughs in perspectives all the time (perhaps small perhaps larger – depends on your measure).  I believe that you cannot remain static in this field, and that there is always someone smarter than you out there, and many ways to improve what you are doing.  I believe this will be true for a life time – which is kind of comforting that the game in effect will never end…

There are significant (from my perspective) deficiencies in my theories, and then there are hunches about things, or glimpses and clues about the way things work that inspire me from time to time to pursue lines of thinking and develop and flesh out approaches, theories and techniques I’ve been working on.

The whole smorgasbord of possibilities about effective approaches to dealing with financial markets is endless, hence I see it as an ongoing mission to unravel as much as I can as effectively and methodically as I can, given time and effort limitations, and the need to be effective in the present, and improve this into the future. 

The advantage that I now have is that I’m armed with a detailed knowledge of a range of perspectives/paradigms, and I can readily identify known paradigms and limited concepts quickly, in order to more time effectively locate original perspectives that may yield potentially better approaches.

There is also Yogi’s extensive works which are actually much more intricate than I at first perceived – given that there are many perspectives open to interpretation in both the original works, and in the many interpretations thrown up by the revisionists. Then there are other areas of knowledge such as Wyckoff that people like motorway and snake are delving into that I want to look at – even one good idea may be worth the effort, let alone more than one…

I am also interested in expanding my fledgling Elliott Wave knowledge getting into Neely’s concepts about the time and price relationships in wave structure more and tying this in with cycle theories, both through research of past markets, and simultaneously road testing these in the present.  I also see that there are possibly identifiable attributes in ending diagonals that differentiate them from nesting patterns for instance, so there is work there in the minutia too…   again, ongoing study in the past and road testing in the present…

 Some of wavepicker’s pioneering is also inspirational and his work in delta time may be another piece of the puzzle.

So, broadly no, this is not a search for perfection.  The concept of “Perfection” is a rich topic since there are many facets both in practical terms and in philosophical terms about what this is and what it means.    In everyday life, taking about this kind of thing is in my view on a slippery slope.  On the one front it is almost impossible not to be subjective at some level (wether you are aware of it or not), and on the other you leave yourself open to being labelled in the typical “Aussie” vernacular an “intellectual wanker” with the pervasive anti-intellectual culture in Australia.

At the philosophical level, I don’t believe “perfection” can be obtained in the absolute and truest sense of the word universally (dictionary definition), without everything that is known and not known being “perfect” – Essentially achieving a state of Utopia, but in a universal sense.  I do not know if this state is possible or not.  I think that it is unlikely that this universal utopian state can be achieved (if it’s possible) for such a significant amount of time into the future that it isn’t really worth thinking about in this time period. 

So that leaves us with this perspective about individual skill sets and individual knowledge.  I do believe that I can greatly improve my current approach, and am actively doing so when I get time.


Regards


Magdoran


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## tech/a (7 July 2007)

Great to have a passion.


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## wavepicker (8 July 2007)

I have been to see quite a few Gann seminar presenters over the last 5-6 years.

I went to see the Glenn Kuppe presentation largely because he is new, and "to kill some time" for a night.

I made my mind up not to pursue the Gann style of analysis years ago because of impression I got form presenters such as:

-Brent Cochrane(SAS Global)
-SITM
-Kuppe
-Cowan
-Jenkins


This was of the pure arrogance displayed, and the "I know something you don't attitude and it's gonna cost you big if you wanna know some" which I cannot stand. I see this in Yogi too, and it does nothing but detract potential Gann students. I see this too also in many of the pratitioners, apart form Mag who is quite happy to give some good pointers to potential Gann students

Only the Mclaren presentations ever made any sort of sense to me, and he presents his material in such a way that the laymen can understand. This is not a plug for him as I am not a Gann prationer, but if I was ever interested in the Gann style, he in my eyes woud be worth considering, just my opinion after attending quite a few Gann related seminars over the years. 

Cheers


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## Magdoran (29 July 2007)

*Course Material Critique*


Here is an update on the actual course based on talking with a student from the seminar held last week, where I got to look through the entire “course book” (if you can call it that), and asked a range of questions on what was presented.  

Of course since I wasn’t at the seminar, then I cannot be totally objective because I have to rely on looking at the actual published material, and on a second hand synopsis of what happened in the seminar.  Having said that though, I’m still confident that my estimation will be relevant in appraising the material in the “course book”.

The “course” folder (which is a bit of a misnomer) was not well organised or structured, and was really just a compendium of some of Kuppe’s fairly sketchy understandings of Gann (or if he knows more, he wasn’t displaying it).  It was mainly pages of charts with a few markings on them like horizontal price lines to illustrate price theories, an attempt to explain patterns of trend (but missing the lion’s share of this concept), and dates to illustrate cycle theory, and a few pages of basic trading advice and some brief lists of various longer term cycle lengths.  And that’s about it.

Kuppe tries to address the concept of patterns of trend by loosely reflecting McLaren’s descriptions, but done in such a way that much of the subtlety and in-depth concepts that McLaren covers (especially about counter trends) is lost.  Sure he deals with examples of counting the counter trend days, but misses much of the precision McLaren succinctly conveys.  (I get the impression some people pad out their presentations with guff rather than aim for brevity).

*Price:*

Kuppe touched on what McLaren called “the division of the range” (essentially retracements in eights and thirds and extensions both up and down of price increments) in a fairly uncomprehensive way, dealing with minor extensions such as a 1/8 extension into a minor top.  He totally missed all sorts of key concepts such as how to look for price harmonics in a range of time frames, and various alternative methods to do this.  

Even simple concepts such as using divisions for price increments or extensions are not covered in the material.  For the amount charged I would have thought that this topic alone should have been fully addressed in a succinct and well structured chapter.  This topic barely scraped the surface and only covered a very small fraction of what should have been addressed in a 2 day seminar.  Either he doesn’t fully understand such a basic foundation, or was deficient in providing a well structured and comprehensive coverage of a key concept.

*Time:*

Kuppe touched on various cycle theories, and listed various long term cycles in terms of years, and then addressed some of the concepts of squares.  But I was astounded as to how threadbare the course work was.  There was no real structure in this section, and it was essentially 30-40 charts hurled into the folder with a few dates thrown in with little explanation of how to use the cycle properly, and no evident appreciation for vibration theory or the harmonics involved.

The various charts on cycles showed Kuppe’s interpretation of what the dominant cycle was for various commodities such as gold for example, and listed various dates on the charts, citing 90 day and 144 day cycles mainly, and a couple of odd cycle lengths like 120 day cycles, but without much in-depth explanation of how to construct these, and how to trade them (suggested entry and exit criteria for example).  

You need to know how to position from counter trends in my view, and he really did not address this at all, which in my view is critical to understanding trends, and especially cycles within trends.  His coverage of the types of trend didn’t go far enough, certainly in terms of addressing counter trends and understanding them.  I strongly suspect that even though he may have heard the term, he really doesn’t comprehend what McLaren is talking about for instance (even though he seems to have borrowed heavily from him).

I didn’t see any evidence of his understanding vibration theory, or if he does understand the harmonics in cycles, his work certainly did not convey this.  Also, embarking people on learning time cycles without understanding pattern, then price first, is potentially disastrous for the student since time is the hardest component to grasp in my opinion.

*Squares:*

The way McLaren deals with the square of the range is totally different to the rudimentary treatment Kuppe gives it.  He totally missed the point about vibration theory in terms how to use the harmonics in the squares, and how these express themselves through the underlying.  While he understood the nuts and bolts of increments, he really didn’t address the crucial use of the harmonics in these at all.

I found his treatment of the Square of the range concept to reflect in a fairly simplistic way the core concepts that Bryce T Gilmore published in his works on the geometry of the market – the idea that if an underlying moves down x points, you project this number ahead in days to find a trend changing point in time.  This is a problematic approach, and has a whole range of different viewpoints on how and when to do this, which Kuppe from what I can see is totally ignorant of.  Also, this is just one way to deal with this particular concept.

This is such a complex area since so many revisionist have debated in great detail the pit falls involved with using this method, and have commented on where and when to use this type of approach in context.  Taking this out of context is really dangerous in my view, especially with new students without making some clear cut caveats and warnings.

A person I’m helping with technical analysis recently talked to McLaren about the best way to learn, and McLaren apparently suggested the same process I have adopted for helping people to learn this style – focus on pattern first (and especially develop and understanding of counter trends), then price (although this can be done at the same time), then much later learn about time since this is the most difficult aspect.


*Conclusion:*

My estimation then is that Kuppe’s offering was a poorly conceived “course” (which is probably a misnomer as it was more like a rambling patchy compendium of charts), with some very basic charts thrown in with questionable effectiveness, and was threadbare for content – all for around $2000.  Not good value in my view when you can pay a lot less for hours of very high quality material.

The content I saw could have been covered in much less time by someone who knew what they were talking about (which you can see done in reality for example on McLaren’s DVDs).  In my view there is no comparison with McLaren’s course work, not even close.

I was expecting so much more than this, and I can see now why he was so defensive in the information seminar since he actually only covered the material shown in the teaser in the seminar.  That was all he had!  No wonder he didn’t like my probing, he had nothing more to offer than the ground floor basics! And there was I hoping for some inspiration.

Frankly, if we’re talking about the depth of understanding of geometric Gann styles and their application, based on the material I saw, Kuppe probably wouldn’t measure up to the standard of  the intermediate level traders that I am assisting.


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## Magdoran (29 July 2007)

Oh, I neglected to mention that Kuppe also covered a swing chart style a bit like SITM uses…  but I forgot to mention that since I really don’t like swing charts – I know Gann used these early on, but in my view they were well and truly superseded.


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