Short S&P 500 at August 2007 top and cover end of February 2009?
Sounds too good to be true? Well, our friends at Elliot Wave International did it. Learn how these people read the market sentiment like a crystal ball and successfully signaled a trade that brought 900 point profit when the market crashed.
Learn from Robert Prechter, the man who predicted the 80s bull market before 80s. Prechter successfully predicted the 87 crash weeks before. He is the author of 2002 book Conquer the Crash which explained the current crash step by step including the deflation that nobody believed in.
The Elliott Wave Principle
In the 1930s, Ralph Nelson Elliott, a corporate accountant by profession, studied price movements in the financial markets and observed that certain patterns repeat themselves. He offered proof of his discovery by making astonishingly accurate stock market forecasts. What appears random and unrelated, Elliott said, will actually trace out a recognizable pattern once you learn what to look for. Elliott called his discovery "The Elliott Wave Principle," and its implications were huge. He had identified the common link that drives the trends in human affairs, from financial markets to fashion, from politics to popular culture.
Robert Prechter, Jr., president of Elliott Wave International, resurrected the Wave Principle from near obscurity in 1976 when he discovered the complete body of R.N. Elliott's work in the New York Library. Robert Prechter, Jr. and A.J. Frost published Elliott Wave Principle in 1978. The book received enthusiastic reviews and became a Wall Street bestseller. In Elliott Wave Principle, Prechter and Frost's forecast called for a roaring bull market in the 1980s, to be followed by a record bear market. Needless to say, knowledge of the Wave Principle among private and professional investors grew dramatically in the 1980s.
When investors and traders first discover the Elliott Wave Principle, there are several reactions:
Disbelief – that markets are patterned and largely predictable by technical analysis alone
Joyous “irrational exuberance” – at having found a “crystal ball” to foretell the future
And finally the correct, and useful response – “Wow, here is a valuable new tool I should learn to use.”
Just like any system or structure found in nature, the closer you look at wave patterns, the more structured complexity you see. It is structured, because nature’s patterns build on themselves, creating similar forms at progressively larger sizes. You can see these fractal patterns in botany, geography, physiology, and the things humans create, like roads, residential subdivisions… and – as recent discoveries have confirmed – in market prices.
Natural systems, including Elliott wave patterns in market charts, “grow” through time, and their forms are defined by interruptions to that growth.
Here's what is meant by that. When your hands formed in the womb, they first looked like round paddles growing equally in all directions. Then, in the places between your fingers, cells ceased growing or died, and growth was directed to the five digits. This structured progress and regress is essential to all forms of growth. That this “punctuated growth” appears in market data is only natural – as Robert Prechter, Jr., the world's foremost Elliott wave expert and president of Elliott Wave International, says, “Everything that thrives must have setbacks.”
The first step in Elliott wave analysis is identifying patterns in market prices. At their core, wave patterns are simple; there are only two of them: “impulse waves,” and “corrective waves.”
Impulse waves are composed of five sub-waves and move in the same direction as the trend of the next larger size (labeled as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Impulse waves are called so because they powerfully impel the market.
A corrective wave follows, composed of three sub-waves, and it moves against the trend of the next larger size (labeled as a, b, c). Corrective waves accomplish only a partial retracement, or "correction," of the progress achieved by any preceding impulse wave.
As the figure to the right shows, one complete Elliott wave consists of eight waves and two phases: five-wave impulse phase, whose sub-waves are denoted by numbers, and the three-wave corrective phase, whose sub-waves are denoted by letters.
What R.N. Elliott set out to describe using the Elliott Wave Principle was how the market actually behaves. There are a number of specific variations on the underlying theme, which Elliott meticulously described and illustrated. He also noted the important fact that each pattern has identifiable requirements as well as tendencies. From these observations, he was able to formulate numerous rules and guidelines for proper wave identification. A thorough knowledge of such details is necessary to understand what the markets can do, and at least as important, what it does not do.
You have only just begun to learn the power and complexity of the Elliott Wave Principle. So, don't let your Elliott wave education end here. Join Elliott Wave International's free Club EWI and access the Basic Tutorial: 10 lessons on The Elliott Wave Principle and learn how to use this valuable tool in your own trading and investing.
You can also watch the Elliott wave crash course video for free:
What Moves the Stock Market?
Here is a socionomic view - from Robert Prechter - that explains the social mood of the population in aggregate is what moves the markets:
The Stock Market Is Patterned - Here's the Proof
You don't have to sift through the latest economic data as if they were tea leaves. March 24, 2010
In the 1930s, Ralph Nelson Elliott described the stock market as a fractal -- an object that is similarly shaped at different scales. Scientists today recognize financial markets’ price records as fractals, but they presume them to be of the indefinite variety. Elliott found something different:
You see that each “wave” within the overall structure subdivides in a specific way. If the wave is heading in the same direction as the wave of one larger degree, then it subdivides into five waves. If the wave is heading in the opposite direction as the wave of one larger degree, then it subdivides into three waves (or a variation).
Understanding how the market progresses at all degrees of trend gives you an invaluable perspective. No longer do you have to sift through the latest economic data as if they were tea leaves. You gain a condensed view of the whole panorama of essential trends in human social mood and activity, as far back as the data can take you.
OK, now you try it. Figure 3-7 shows an actual price record. Does this record depict two, three, four or five completed waves? Based on your answer, what would you call for next?
Let’s compare your answer with mine. From the simple idea that a bull market comprises five waves, The Elliott Wave Theorist in September 1982 called for the Dow to quintuple to nearly 4000 and on October 6 announced, “Super bull market underway!” The November 8 issue then graphed the forecast for the expected fifth wave up, as you can see in Figure 3-8.
As you can see, Elliott waves are clear not only in retrospect. They are often -- particularly at turning points -- quite clear in prospect.
Read the rest of this important report now, free! All you need is to create a free Club EWI profile. Here's what you'll learn:
How Is the Stock Market Patterned?
The Necessity and Efficiency of .5-3.
Examples of Real-World Long-Term Waves: DJIA, Gold, CRB
The Fibonacci Sequence in the Wave Principle
Why Is the Stock Market Patterned? Investors' Herding Impulse
Often, basics is all you need to know. March 5, 2010
By Editorial Staff
Understand the basics of the subject matter, break it down to its smallest parts -- and you've laid a good foundation for proper application of... well, anything, really. That's what we had in mind when we put together our free 10-lesson online Basic Elliott Wave Tutorial, based largely on Robert Prechter's classic "Elliott Wave Principle -- Key to Market Behavior." Here's an excerpt:
Successful market timing depends upon learning the patterns of crowd behavior. By anticipating the crowd, you can avoid becoming a part of it. ...the Wave Principle is not primarily a forecasting tool; it is a detailed description of how markets behave. In markets, progress ultimately takes the form of five waves of a specific structure.
The personality of each wave in the Elliott sequence is an integral part of the reflection of the mass psychology it embodies. The progression of mass emotions from pessimism to optimism and back again tends to follow a similar path each time around, producing similar circumstances at corresponding points in the wave structure.
These properties not only forewarn the analyst about what to expect in the next sequence but at times can help determine one's present location in the progression of waves, when for other reasons the count is unclear or open to differing interpretations.
As waves are in the process of unfolding, there are times when several different wave counts are perfectly admissible under all known Elliott rules. It is at these junctures that knowledge of wave personality can be invaluable. If the analyst recognizes the character of a single wave, he can often correctly interpret the complexities of the larger pattern.
The following discussions relate to an underlying bull market... These observations apply in reverse when the actionary waves are downward and the reactionary waves are upward.
1) First waves -- ...about half of first waves are part of the "basing" process and thus tend to be heavily corrected by wave two. In contrast to the bear market rallies within the previous decline, however, this first wave rise is technically more constructive, often displaying a subtle increase in volume and breadth. Plenty of short selling is in evidence as the majority has finally become convinced that the overall trend is down. Investors have finally gotten "one more rally to sell on," and they take advantage of it. The other half of first waves rise from either large bases formed by the previous correction, as in 1949, from downside failures, as in 1962, or from extreme compression, as in both 1962 and 1974. From such beginnings, first waves are dynamic and only moderately retraced. ...
What the basic Elliott wave progression looks like
Difference between impulsive and corrective waves
How to estimate the length of waves
How Fibonacci numbers fit into wave analysis
Practical application tips for the method
More
Keep reading this free tutorial today.
Elliott Wave International (EWI) is the world’s largest market forecasting firm. EWI’s 20-plus analysts provide around-the-clock forecasts of every major market in the world via the internet and proprietary web systems like Reuters and Bloomberg. EWI’s educational services include conferences, workshops, webinars, video tapes, special reports, books and one of the internet’s richest free content programs, Club EWI.
Video: The Real-Time Power of Elliott Wave Analysis
Mainstream financial analysts always look for ways to explain market action through news stories and events. Conventional wisdom states that news and inter-market correlations cause market booms and busts, but such explanations rely on selective presentation of the data. In this video, Elliott Wave International's Asian-Pacific Financial Forecast Editor Mark Galasiewski shows you how Elliott wave analysis was able to predict Hong Kong's late '90s mania and its aftermath in real time -- without looking at the news or the market's "fundamentals."
In the video below, EWI Senior Commodity Analyst Jeffrey Kennedy walks you
through a basic checklist of how to put the Wave Principle to work. This clip
was taken from The Wave Principle Applied webinar, originally recorded for Futures
Junctures subscribers.
Elliott waves don't merely reflect prices plotted over time. Each wave
has its own "personality." Listen to this video by EWI's Wayne Gorman
to learn more about the psychology behind the waves and how it affects your
investment decisions.
This video was taken from the free Club EWI video series: Learn the Why,
What and How of Elliott Wave Analysis. This 3-video series is a great way
to get started with the Wave Principle. You can get these videos free with
a Club EWI Membership.
How to Find Correct Elliott Wave Patterns in Market Charts
(Note: This video was originally recorded on August 10, 2007) In this timeless trading lesson on Elliott wave analysis, Elliott Wave International's Senior Currency Analyst Jim Martens gives you an answer to a very important question: "If you've identified the wrong Elliott Wave pattern, how do you find the right one?"
Video: The Versatility of the Wave Principle Timeless Trading Lesson
In the video below, EWI senior analyst and trading instructor Jeffrey Kennedy shows how the Wave Principle can help you identify a high-probability trade set up regardless of the direction of the larger trend.
Just like any system or structure found in nature, the closer you look at wave patterns, the more structured complexity you see. It is structured, because nature’s patterns build on themselves, creating similar forms at progressively larger sizes. You can see these fractal patterns in botany, geography, physiology, and the things humans create, like roads, residential subdivisions… and – as recent discoveries have confirmed – in market prices. 
