Gann Box: How It Links Price and Time, How to Draw It and Its TradingView Settings

A Gann box is a rectangle drawn on a chart between two points, usually a major swing low and a major swing high, and split into equal divisions of price on one side and of time on the other. TradingView’s help page presents it, along with the Gann fan and the Gann square, as a tool to measure and detect recurring price cycles, and calls it “a road map for the market”. Traders project the box forward and watch the dates and prices where its divisions cross. It is a way to organize a chart around price and time together, not a tested signal.

How the Gann box works

The box starts from a major pivot, a low or a high. Its height is a price range and its width a span of time, and both are cut into the same divisions, so that each level in price has a matching level in time. The diagram above uses quarters and the Fibonacci ratios 0.382 and 0.618; the tool lets you pick your own. Its diagonals join opposite corners: on a square chart, a diagonal is a move of one unit of price per unit of time, the same idea as the 1x1 line of the Gann fan.

The idea behind it is Gann’s squaring of price and time: a move of a certain size in price is expected to relate to a matching span in time. The box makes that relation visible, and traders use it to look for targets in price and in time.

Scaling the chart: the square relationship

TradingView’s documentation says the chart must be scaled so that the market has a square relationship, “so that a unit of price would correspond a unit of time”; otherwise the box and its angles mean nothing. To find the scale for a market, it suggests taking the difference between main points, top to top or bottom to bottom, and dividing it by the time the market took to make that move.

How to draw a Gann box

1. Choose a major pivot, the low or high that started the move you want to study.
2. Choose the second point: the end of the move, or a projected price and date.
3. Scale the chart from past swings, as above, so that the box is square in price per unit of time.
4. Pick the divisions to show (quarters, thirds, Fibonacci ratios) and turn on the angles if you want the diagonals.
5. To look ahead, copy the box forward from the second point with the same height and width, as in the diagram below.
6. Watch the crossings of price and time levels ahead of the current bar, and confirm any reaction there with price action or support and resistance.

The projected box says nothing about the direction of the next move. It only marks when and at what price a reaction would be worth noting, if one comes. Its time levels fall on dates fixed in advance, which makes it easy to check afterward whether price did anything special there.

Gann box settings in TradingView

TradingView’s page does not list default values for the levels. Check them in the tool before you rely on a reading, and keep the same set on every chart so that your notes stay comparable.

Gann box, Gann fan and Square of Nine

The three tools share the same aim and the same weakness. The Gann box divides a move into price and time levels; the Gann fan draws angles from a single pivot; the Square of Nine turns a price into levels with a square root rule, and the Square of 144 lays a 12 by 12 grid over the chart. All of them need an anchor and a scale chosen by the trader. The man behind them is presented on the W. D. Gann page.

Limitations of the Gann box

• Free choices. The two points, the scale and the divisions are all chosen by the trader, often after the move.
• No rule set. The tool draws lines; it says nothing about entries, stops or targets.
• Scale sensitivity. A different price per bar changes every angle and crossing.
• No measured edge. We do not test it on our bench, which measures chart patterns, and we found no published study of its levels.

We found no source for preferred rise over run ratios for the box, so none is given here. More tools of this family are in technical analysis.