Larry R. Williams
Larry Richard Williams 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.
Early life
Williams was born on October 6, 1942, in Miles City, Montana, the son of Sylva Berthea and Richard Sigwart Williams. In 1960, he graduated from Billings High School, in Billings, Montana. He is a graduate of the School of Journalism, class of 1964 at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He was a member of Alpha Delta Sigma while at Oregon and served as national president.Williams was one of the founders of the "Rock N Roll Marathons" that have raised in excess of $320 million for charities throughout the world.
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.
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, turning $10,000 into $1,137,600 in a 12-month competition. 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."
Politics
Williams was twice the Republican Party nominee to the United States Senate in Montana. In 1978 [United States Senate election in Montana|1978], he defeated Bill Osborne and Clancy Rich in the Republican primary with 35,479 votes, and then lost to Democratic U.S. Representative Max Baucus in the general election by 160,353 votes to 127,589. In 1982 [United States Senate election in Montana|1982], he defeated attorney Willie Dee Morris in the primary by 49,615 votes to 6,696, and was then defeated in the general election by incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator John Melcher by 174,861 votes to 133,789.He sponsored Initiative 86, which made Montana the first state to index tax brackets for inflation.