Elliotte Wave is a little like witchcraft, their are always countless excuses why it did not work and virtually never are two practitioners in agreement. Because of the natural distrust or low regard many users do not openly practice EW. But not many people know that the tenets of DOW Theory, a well respected and often quoted approach, are similar and comparable to those pragmatic rules that EW uses. Nor do many people realize that publications like the Bank Credit Analyst were founded to a great extent on EW.
Whatever, there is always confusion and if your money rides on it you will , invariable be annoyed when the promised low or high occurs precisely to the tick but 15 years after you lost all your money. Therefore it should always be remember that EW only gives you probabilities that, although they are more often right than wrong , are still just probabilities that should be overlaid by a good deal of discipline. Below are two charts of the Dow Jones Industrial Index, one is arithmetic and the other semi-log.
Click on the chart to enlarge. Two opinions seem to be doing the rounds. One is that after the 1966 to 1974/1982 years in limbo the markets took of on a 5th wave (out of a few hundred year sequence) to top in 1999/2000. The rise into 2007 could therefore be a B-wave and the recent drop part of (or perhaps all ) the C wave. The other is that the actual top occurred in 2008 and so far we have only done wave A and B and are about to embark on C. You will see that on the semi-log chart this view appears to make more sense. In reality it does not much matter for the moment. Corrections most often go all the way to the 4th wave of previous degree (1000-570 or 40 if you take a longer view). Also as this wave is clearly extended it is normal to return to the top of wave 2, the high in 1987. So no matter how we look at it, it is pretty dramatic. Another good reason why very few will take it seriously, but I do!