How Understanding Elliot Wave Analysis Can Enhance Your Stock Trading Strategy And Double Your Returns

By James P Kupe

One question every trader should ask before making an investment decision is: What is the overall trend of the market right at this moment? An understanding of Elliott Wave principles can help traders answer this question, and it can give you a confident forecast of whether the market is likely to go up, down or sideways in the immediate future.

Elliott Wave Theory can help traders to identify whether the market is currently trending, or is in a counter-trend or reaction. Understanding these wave patterns can help you to forecast accurately where the market is likely to go next, and take a position accordingly.

There are three major elements to Elliott Wave Theory

Pattern - Is the trend currently up or down? Is it in an impulse move or a correction?

Price - When the market has completed an impulse move, how far will it correct?

Time - How long will the current trend continue?

A bull market or up trend is signaled by a series of higher highs and higher lows, while a bear market or trend has a series lower highs and lower lows. You can see these wave patterns in the market over all time periods - daily, weekly, monthly, and if you are a short term trader, even on intra day charts.

When any market corrects, the major support and resistance ratios are .382, 50% and .618 and 100% of it's previous ranges. And it's important to remember that these reactions can be measured in both time and price. So if a bull market were trending strongly, you would expect an average correction to retrace around 50% of the previous leg up in both time and price.

Small retracements mean strong trends, so for example, if a stock rallies $5.00 in 2 months, you would estimate a 'normal' correction would be around $2.50 in roughly 30 days. If the market retraced less than 50%, say .382 in price ($1.91) and time (23 days), then gave you a signal that it was preparing to resume it's rally, it would put that Stock in a very bullish position for a continued move higher.

As I said, the major importance of understanding the Elliott Wave pattern in the markets you trade is to determine the direction of the dominant trend. We always want to trade with the main trend, and if possible, enter at the end of corrections to the main trend, so we can maximize our profit from the next move. The problem for many people however is this - how do you know the correction is ending and the major trend is resuming?

There are any number of 'entry signals' traders use to enter trends - watching for higher highs and lows on our Swing Charts, entering on a Moving Average crossover, trading trend line breaks or new highs (or lows), etc. Your critical goal as a trader is to find an entry trigger you are comfortable with, something that has reliably identified the resumption of fast moving trends, and then take every entry signal that system gives you. Once you have found your signal and entered a trade, implement a trailing stop loss system that takes you out of your trades when each trend comes to an end.

When you do that, you'll find your trading becomes much less stressful, you'll have less losing trades, and your account balance will have every chance to grow consistently. - 29971

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