Critiquing rigid Elliott wave ratios after computerized trading

A long-time Elliott wave practitioner reported impulse-count variations that a 1978-era wave-principle text did not mention. The first edition of that text was published in 1978, before desktop computers were common.

Editorial reading: keep the impulse-and-correction skeleton. The critique is of textbook rigidity about relative wave lengths, not of wave work as such.

Ratio exceptions inside the impulse

A late-1980s inquiry about a third wave being shorter than a first wave received the reply that the fifth wave would then be shorter than the third. That reply describes a wave-ratio-exception: a departure from the usual relative-length order among impulse waves.

Editorial reading: treat the exception as expected structure rather than a reason to abandon the count.

Mid-wave fragments and first-wave complexity

Mid-impulse structure was described as often containing an ab-style correction about halfway through a third wave. An abc-correction is a three-leg countertrend fragment, including those abbreviated ab-style pauses inside a third impulse wave.

First waves were described as more structurally complex than earlier textbook presentations, with greater complexity linked to smaller second-wave corrections. Those structural variations were attributed to computerized trading reducing emotion-driven price behavior.

Editorial reading: a mid-wave abc-correction is part of the impulse, not a count-breaker.

Visual correctness before any label

The practitioner treated visual correctness of the count as the primary Elliott wave rule and said many analysts forget it. Visual correctness is the requirement that a finished count must look internally consistent on the chart before it is trusted.

Wave labels were characterized as temporary signposts that can change a short distance later. Elliott wave counting was described as usable on any chart, including Japanese indexes.

Editorial reading: Elliott wave here is a labeled impulse-and-correction reading of price structure. It is a revisable signpost, not a fixed forecast.

A secondary check that a correction may be finished

Relative Strength Index was used as a secondary check to help decide when a correction had finished.

Editorial reading: require that lookback-oscillator finish-check before calling a correction complete. It does not replace visual correctness.