Larry R. Williams

About the Author

Larry Richard Williams (born October 6, 1942) is an American author, stock and commodity trader, and 1970s–80s political candidate in the state of Montana. He is the father of actress Michelle Williams.

Career

Williams is the author of 11 books, most on stocks and commodity trading. Other books include The Mount Sinai Myth, based on an archeological search for Mount Sinai in Egypt. This book was featured in Vanity Fair in a rewrite by Howard Blum.

Confessions of a Radical Tax Protestor discusses his battle with the Internal Revenue Service, which led to a trial on three charges of tax evasion. On February 5, 2010, those charges were dropped and he pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges of failing to file income tax returns on time (for tax years 1999, 2000, and 2001).

Williams has created numerous market indicators, including Williams %R, Ultimate Oscillator, COT indices, accumulation/distribution indicators, cycle forecasts, market sentiment, and value measurements for commodity prices. Williams won the 1987 World Cup Championship of Futures Trading from the Robbins Trading Company, where he turned $10,000 to over $1,100,000 (11,300%) in a 12-month competition with real money. Ten years later, his daughter, actress Michelle, won the same contest. His son, Jason, a psychiatrist, has written a book on the personality of winning traders, The Mental Edge in Trading.

In November 2014, at the Traders Expo in Las Vegas, Larry Williams recorded a series of four videos discussing his 50+ years of trading. In 2018, he appeared as a guest on the NPR economics podcast, Planet Money to discuss the story of his tax protest, extradition and trial.

Williams funds a six-figure scholarship at the University of Oregon in honor of his college professor, Max Wales, restricted to “journalism and communication students who… have demonstrated creative talent, but may not have a high grade point average.”