The Elliott Wave principle is a form of technical analysis that tries to foretell trends in financial markets. It is named after Ralph Nelson Elliott, an accountant who discovered the concept in the 1903s. He proposed that the prices of the market follow a specific pattern, which today they now all Elliott Waves. Elliott published his findings in the book The Wave Principle, it was published in 1938. He also had articles published in Financial World magazine in 1939 and his Flagship Nature’s Laws - The Secret of the Universe in 1946. Elliott stated that because we as a race are moving at a constant rhythm, our actions and decisions can be predicted in rhythms too.
Elliott’s model says that market prices alternate between five waves and three waves at any degree of a trend. As these waves arise, the bigger price patterns unravel in the form of a geometric shape. Inside the dominant trend, the waves 1-3-5 are the “motive” waves, and each of those has five big waves have five smaller waves beneath it. Waves 2-4 are called “corrective” waves, and they only have three sub-waves.
Each degree of a pattern in a financial market has a name, traders use symbols for each wave to show both function and degree. They use numbers for motive waves, letters for corrective waves. Degrees are somewhat relative, they are defined by form, not by size or duration.
The classification of a wave at any level can vary, traders usually agree on the standard order of levels:
- Grand Supercycle: Multi-decade to multi-century
- Supercycle: A few years to decades
- Cycle: 1 year to a few years
- Primary: A few months to a couple of years
- Intermetiate: Weeks to months
- Minor: Weeks
- Minute: Days
- Minuette: Hours
- Subminuette: Minutes
Elliott’s market model relies heavily on looking at price charts. Traders study price movies to be able to sort out the waves and waves structures, and tell what prices may arise next. The application of the wave principle is a form of pattern recognition. The structures Elliott mentioned also seem familiar to a fractal. A Fractal is similar patterns appearing at every level of the trend. Elliott Waves investors say that this is just something that happens naturally and they often get bigger and grow more complex as time goes on.
The model shows that we as a human race have a psychology that develops in patterns, like buying and selling because of reflected prices. As Elliott once said “It’s as though we are somehow programmed by mathematics. Seashell, galaxy, snowflake or human: we’re all bound by the same order.”