The very last (apparently) of Larry Williams' seminars was written up in Trader Monthly, Oct/Nov 2005. It was held on St. Croix (that's why he does it!...) in early Nov. 2004. Here is that colorful story, in full.
Also reprinted are all 7 readers' comments, incl. a couple of noteworthy ones from the author himself, Matt Blackman, who claims serious negative editing bias, after his submission. In any case, enjoy.
Larry Williams's Last Stand
For the past five years, legendary trader Larry Williams has speculated $1 million before legions of pie-eyed disciples. Now he's pulling up the tent stakes on his seven-figure show. We snuck in to see what happens when a trading slugger takes his final cuts.
By: Matt Blackman
Issue: October/November 2005 , Page 92
It's a sultry afternoon on the island of St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where a man named Glenn, in khaki shorts and Tevas, strolls to the bar at the Carambola Beach Resort. He orders two Heinekens and heads back to his table, where he and a man named Cody, sporting a blue Hawaiian shirt, lean over a laptop and engage in feverish discussion, oblivious to the paradise around them.
On the laptop screen sits Glenn and Cody's obsession: a chart of the S&P 500 Index. Although fresh off their flights, they've come here for neither the babes nor the beach -- they've come to spend the next three days sitting under fluorescent lights with 50 other traders, breathing recycled air and watching 62-year-old Larry Williams trade $1 million in real time, with profits shared among the attendees.
It's called the Million-Dollar Challenge, and in the five years since Williams began hosting it, this dog-and-pony show has achieved a cultlike status, hopscotching to exotic locations around the globe and affording its participants the rare opportunity to witness a trading legend at work. This is the sixteenth Challenge for Williams since October 1999, and -- much to the chagrin of his devotees, who long ago drank Williams's Kool-Aid -- it will be the last. Williams boasts that in 15 seminars over a total of 45 trading days, he has already made $1,028,750 in profits, or more than $68,000 per Challenge. Now he's pulling up the stakes on his tent, claiming he's tired of the travel, and traders like Glenn and Cody have paid $4,500 each to watch the farewell show.
This is Glenn's first Challenge. Tall and lean, he's a part-time helicopter pilot who operates his own Bell Jet Ranger and looks the part in Serengeti Aviator sunglasses. Fairly new to the financial game, Glenn has given himself five years to learn how to trade.
Cody, stocky with broad shoulders, sports a marine-style crew cut and a military swagger. This is his sixth Williams seminar. He's had a hard time trading recently. The fact that Hurricane Ivan beat up his Florida home two months ago hasn't helped his confidence.
During a lull in the conversation about markets, Glenn asks Cody how much he's spent on programs, books and seminars since he began trading. It's an innocent question, but it catches Cody off guard. He takes a minute to do some mental calculations. Including his trading losses, Cody estimates he's down about $800,000 so far.
Larry Williams began his trading career in 1962 and has since authored eight trading books that are still in circulation. His latest, on deciphering and using Commitment of Traders reports, is due out any day now. But it was his 1987 victory in the coveted Robbins World Cup Championship of Futures Trading -- when he turned $10,000 into $1.1 million in under 12 months, a record that has yet to be broken -- that made him a household name in trading circles.
A former boxing manager and amateur archaeologist, Williams excavated his first trading fortune in the early 1970s, then went on to write about it in the aptly -- if unimaginatively -- titled "How I Made a Million Dollars Trading Commodities." Evolving into a futures-market guru (even his daughter Michelle, a novice using Dad's tricks, reportedly made $110,000 trading a few years ago), Williams says he has trained more than 200,000 traders.
His books have been translated into at least six languages and are sold worldwide. Among a lot of rookie traders, Larry Williams is big.
How big? In 2000, Williams held a Challenge in Shanghai. "When we landed at the airport, we were met by more than 100 fans, all wanting his autograph," recalls Glenn Larson, the founder of Genesis, the software platform Williams uses to trade. "Everywhere we went, we were treated like rock stars. We didn't realize why until someone showed us a copy of the Shanghai Securities News, which is like the Wall Street Journal there, with the 'Williams %R' indicator on every stock chart." Ask a group of traders what they think of Larry Williams, and you'll get a variety of answers. Some are reverential almost to the point of cult worship. Some call him a snake-oil salesman who's a better marketer than trader. Others say his systems aren't that special. Williams has heard it all. "Let's face it," he says. "It's hard to make money in markets, and there are many frustrated traders out there. Because they can't do it, they think no one can, so in their minds any system that helps traders must not work.
"You never hear people bemoan Barry Bonds's salary, saying 'If he's so rich, why is he still playing baseball?' or 'If Bill Gates is so rich, why is he still working?' But for some reason, successful traders who teach and write books attract those kinds of comments."
In 2002, while the post-bubble doom and gloom still prevailed, Williams wrote "The Right Stock at the Right Time," which predicted a glorious bull market just beyond the horizon. Tracking the best market years of the twentieth century, Williams found that the majority ended in 2's and 3's, and that years preceding a presidential election had historically been the best of any four-year period. Williams saw reason for hope. In March 2003, as reviews of the book hit the press, the market did indeed begin to climb.
Cynics note that such prognostications essentially hold a 50/50 chance of being correct -- if not better, given that the bull market that doesn't come sooner always comes later. Contrarians dismiss the sheer numerology of it all. But for the 52 traders who have come to St. Croix, such stories become chapter and verse of the gospel, tales that imbue godlike status to a man like Larry Williams. The traders want answers. They want his secrets. And they have not flown in from around the globe to see Larry Williams fail.
