As time went on, I started to see a decline in either quality or objectivity (and both are highly related). I saw a lot of rigorous adherence to impulsive up counts despite the obvious problems with such a count. I sought to explain why such counts broke numerous rules and tendencies, by doing detailed historical analysis:
-- Not All Five-Wave Moves Are Impulses: A Short Treatise on Elliott Wave
-- Another Impulse Wave Study: A Look at the 1974-1975 Low and Rally
-- Historical Count: 2002-2007
-- Five-Wave Structures Revisited: The Identification of an Impulse Wave
-- Wave Speeds and Log Charts (and No, the large count is still not an impulse)
However as time went on there was more willful ignoring of these issues. So I stopped following anybody else's Elliott Wave count months ago. I was just seeing so many bad, sloppy, misleading, lazy, erroneous, etc. practices.
For anybody who has been following my counts, I had been maintaining that the move off the bottom was a complicated WXY structure. And because I was not looking for a "5" to complete the move up (because of the numerous previous violations that told me that I shouldn't be) I think I was more objective in watching the waves unfold.
The top of this wave (so far) occurred on May 2. Look at my previous real time posts on that development, one on May 2, and a confirmation post on May 5:
-- May 2
-- May 5 (and a Long Term View Update)
With the strong move down today breaking the June lows, I thought I would check out the EW blogosphere. And sure enough, right up until yesterday everybody was holding out for a Minor 4 triangle and today everybody is switching to a "P2" (which is completely bogus) top on May 2.
Here is a picture of how ridiculous that position is (and how obviously ridiculous it should have been to anyone looking at it objectively).
But!! you say. What about the "Large separation between waves 2 and 4 rule that forces such a count to be an impulse" ??!!
I call 100% BS on that 'rule'. I think it is an EWI ad hoc / made up rule. Balan makes no mention of it in his book, and I consider his book on Elliott Wave to be the most authoritative source on EW (I find it to be much more useful and practical than Frost and Prechter).
This is a topic that has received a lot of comments on my posts over the last several months, and I continue to stick by my position on it.
I would like to share this comment by ZimZeb that summarizes why using an obscure and nonsensical impulse rule as justification to ignore all kinds of non-impulsive tendencies is bad EW practice and leads to bad results (like with everybody who was looking for a 5 wave move up before the 'top').
This count breaks one glaring guideline of Elliott Wave analysis (binve's note: which I take major exception to as being a 'guideline' as I stated above): that five wave structures where the fourth wave does not enter the territory of the first wave should be counted as impulses. What it does not do, however, is try to pawn off as motive waves those which do not follow the channelling guidelines of impulses. Nor does it suggest movements where the third wave decelerates are impulses. It doesn't have impulses which lack alternation, second and fourth waves staggeringly out of proportion with each other, or second waves that offer pitiful, sub-meager-Fibonacci-fraction excuses for a retracement. It doesn't have RSI peaks at the end of wave ones. It doesn't rely on a truncated fifth to call a top or any large running flats to segregate dubiously odd numbered waves. No five wave movements both start with a rare leading diagonal and end with a rare megaphone expanding ending diagonal. It suggests the choppy movements of the two up legs within the larger (admittedly forceful) move from the 2009 low are both corrective. Some claim breaking the one particular guideline it does is an attempt to be overly-cute, but the count isn't posing as some sort of beautiful and unique snowflake. It's just a reflection of the meandering irrationality of uncertainty in the face of conventionally intractable problems. It's pretty ordinary, actually--just like what most of us face every day.
Well said.
