Elliot Wave Calls the Top... Again

The problem with EW is that although one can find many examples of 5-wave sequences on a Monthly, Weekly, Daily, and Hourly Chart, on many occasions these 5-wave sequences "subdivide" even further in Wave 3, ( becoming what is called a "complex" Wave 3 ) making the methodology even more difficult to identify without going back over it in hindsight.

Often when a rally or Wave goes much further than fibonacci retracements allow, Prechter then winds-up labeling it as a B-Wave, which even if correct, does not help the trader much at all.
Secondly, as is often the case Waves are mislabeled and miscounted and only look CLEAR in hindsight!

As for myself, I have in fact found VALUE in identifying 5-wave up or down sequences in an effort to give me a "target" or "objective" for a move, understanding what Wave 2's and Wave 4's look like when they follow the "Rules of Equality".

Other than that, EW is very difficult to trade by.
I don't recommend it.
 
Well, I'd like to say thanks to all for the replies. My feelings on the elliot wave principal mirror waggie's - I can't really trade it, but it is interesting.

If you read Niederhoffer's "Education of a Speculator," you can see that Prechter\ewi has the wrong approach to prognostication. He actually makes real predictions, as opposed to speaking in generalities, maybes and could be with no time frame. However, if you read his FAQ's, his answer to why he sells the info includes, "Just because you have it, doesn't mean it will help your bottom line."

The biggest eye opener is the number that responded to the poll in the bull camp. I don't think you can completely rule our Dow 15k, and if it does happen, I'm sure Prechter just will revise the timing of his "Grand Supercycle."
 
Quote from mBear:

How high can the S&P Go? is the title of another thread on ET. Everyone wants to know, because once it happens, we can switch from buy the dips to sell the rallies as the dominant trading mode.

Well Prechter and his guys over at elliottwave.com have their semiannual free week going and they are calling the top of the bull market rally ... again. They claim that Nov 7th was the Dow high and Nov 14th was the S&P high. That's it, rally over, lights out, all downside and heartbreak from here.

Except, wait a minute. During the last free week in May, they said the high was in at Dow 8743 and it was all downside from here, heartache, pain, etc.

Marty Schwartz said in "Pit Bull" that while Prechter was the guru de jour in the 80's by predicting the bull market, the crash of 87 turned Prechter into a perma-bear and he called for the market to top all during the 90's. So when EWI tells you they predicted the top in early 2000, well the saying "even a broken clock is right twice a day" seems to apply. (BTW if you get the idea from my nickname that I'm a perma-bear, my other nickname is mBull.)

Oh yeah, the ewi guys were using the fibs for S&P and Dow cash to make their projections for the top here. Numbers that weren't quite hit in either the S&P (1,068) or the Dow (10,012) and yet, they have now abandoned those projections to say the top is in.

So here we go again - was that the top or is there more upside before a huge collapse down to those mega-bearish projections you keep hearing?

====
Got an interesting postcard from elliotwave recently;
titled Q; What is the job of a bear market rally?

Nice postcard card, uses exact same picture as Tony Saliba's derivatives book;
dont see any sign of bear market since March-DIA, SPY, QQQ.

Buying long late yesterday, 50 day moving average area;
didnt answer poll because couldnt find an answer exactly.

===

Love learning- Solomon, trader king
 
"I can't really trade it" .. it is "speaking in generalities, maybes and could be with no time frame". (mBear) That says it all. And yet it still seems to endlessly engage a lot of otherwise sensible minds.

You need accurate comparative prognostication .. thats timing, expected move size, uptick/downtick in front of the expected move, etc; all close accurate stuff.

Wave goodbye to the whole Elliot Wave enchilada .. you might as well consult the heel of your shoe for a better prognosis.
 
I think these type of people like Prechter are fascinated with the potential collapse of western civilization, like Dr. Devorkian was fascinated with death. Not much reason to think their stuff will be much use for trading. I did see some Gann stuff actually work at one point, it pointed out trades that nothing I have ever developed did and it caught moves in areas where my TA was completely indecisive, so you never know.
 
I agree that the EW guys have lost some touch with reality. Robert Miner is another respectable EW guy that called a top in the s&p and in gold a while ago. he even wrote that the wave structure that predicts this top has "90% probability". After it kept shooting higher he wrote "although it's going higher, it's still making a top". Sounds like those academy professors that keep saying that "the fact that we don't know the answer actually make us ever smarter".

While a top may very well be in the making, someone who shouts "Bear" week after week regardless of what the market is doing, is not someone to pay attention to imho. Eventually there will be a big or small bear, except when your timing is off by months... you'd better keep quiet.
 
It is since 20 years that every year he calls for secular top :D It is all the more strange that his master Elliott had normally forecasted that the pick should be around 2012 (as for my model it is around 2008 but I don't pretend like the Elliottists that the market is really fractal and can be applied to any scale without proving it and proving it with so few datas than yearly is not rigorous). He can't ignore that can he :D.


Quote from mBear:

How high can the S&P Go? is the title of another thread on ET. Everyone wants to know, because once it happens, we can switch from buy the dips to sell the rallies as the dominant trading mode.

Well Prechter and his guys over at elliottwave.com have their semiannual free week going and they are calling the top of the bull market rally ... again. They claim that Nov 7th was the Dow high and Nov 14th was the S&P high. That's it, rally over, lights out, all downside and heartbreak from here.

Except, wait a minute. During the last free week in May, they said the high was in at Dow 8743 and it was all downside from here, heartache, pain, etc.

Marty Schwartz said in "Pit Bull" that while Prechter was the guru de jour in the 80's by predicting the bull market, the crash of 87 turned Prechter into a perma-bear and he called for the market to top all during the 90's. So when EWI tells you they predicted the top in early 2000, well the saying "even a broken clock is right twice a day" seems to apply. (BTW if you get the idea from my nickname that I'm a perma-bear, my other nickname is mBull.)

Oh yeah, the ewi guys were using the fibs for S&P and Dow cash to make their projections for the top here. Numbers that weren't quite hit in either the S&P (1,068) or the Dow (10,012) and yet, they have now abandoned those projections to say the top is in.

So here we go again - was that the top or is there more upside before a huge collapse down to those mega-bearish projections you keep hearing?
 
Top of the year possibly (I predicted 9938 more than 2 months ago we didn't do it but approach it on globex at 9915) but THE top of all tops there is no sign yet all the more so that these scale depends on fundamentals and fundamentally it depends on demography and that also Prechter does know it since he had also pointed heavily on that and this is no "elliottist" discovery but classic economic knowledge. And demography should worsen around 2010 in fact even more for Europe than America but what affects America affects all the World and vice versa since it is the foreign money that sustains US market.

Quote from harrytrader:

It is since 20 years that every year he calls for secular top :D It is all the more strange that his master Elliott had normally forecasted that the pick should be around 2012 (as for my model it is around 2008 but I don't pretend like the Elliottists that the market is really fractal and can be applied to any scale without proving it and proving it with so few datas than yearly is not rigorous). He can't ignore that can he :D.


 
Quote from mBear:

Looks like the usual response to one of my threads on et - a collective yawn. Over 120 read the post, only 10 have enough balls to even participate in an anonymous poll. Where are all those discretionary traders that "trade what they think?"

And of course no one posts with an opinion on the subject. Elliot wave - yawn. Market top? - yawn. Markets and trading - yawn. Hmm, lemme guess - you just visited accidentally - were actually trying to find a porn site.


I guess the members at ET just do'nt appreciate the immense value of your contribution.

Can't wait for your analysis of the poll results.........fascinating stuff !
 
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