How to use it

SE
Using the atlas

A map, and how to walk it.

Sir Elliott publishes where a market is inside its structure and the price at which that reading stops being true. It does not tell you to buy. This page is about turning the first thing into a decision — and about the ways that go wrong.

The order

Always start at the top.

Every count here is one hierarchy: the weekly wave contains the daily one, which contains the hourly one, which contains the fifteen-minute one. Read them in that order, every time, and the junior scales stop being noise and start being detail.

Opening the 15M chart first is the single most common way to lose money with a wave count. A five-wave advance on the fifteen-minute chart is a perfectly good structure — and it means nothing if it is the fourth wave of a daily decline. The junior scale can only tell you where you are inside the senior one; it cannot tell you which way to face.

READ THIS WAY1WWhich way the market is going at allCycle · Primary1DThe move you actually tradePrimary · Intermediate1HWhether the daily wave is still buildingIntermediate · Minor15MWhere to get in, and where the stop belongsMinor · Minute
The weekly answers one questionWhich side of the market is the structure on. If you cannot say that, nothing below it is worth reading yet.
The daily is the tradeIt is where the moves are big enough to pay for the spread and slow enough to act on. This is the chart the position is sized from.
The hourly is confirmationThe daily wave should be visibly building here. If the hourly disagrees with the daily, you are early — not right.
The fifteen is the entryA place to get in and a place to put the stop. Never a reason to be in the trade at all.
What you are looking at

Five things on the chart, and what each one claims.

Everything Sir Elliott draws is either a completed claim or an open one, and the difference is marked. A label with a question mark is the wave still being built — the only part of the count that can change shape without the count being wrong.

target zoneinvalidation — the count is wrong below here12345?Closed waves carry a plain label.The one still building carries a question mark — it is the only part of the count that can still change shape.
LabelsWhere the count says each wave began and ended. Larger and heavier means a more senior degree.
The dotted pathShape, not schedule. It says “up in three pushes from here”, not “up by Thursday”.
The target zoneWhere the wave in progress is measured to reach. A zone, because the measurement is a range.
The invalidationThe price at which this reading is finished. The most useful number on the page.
The other count

Read the alternate before you take the trade, not after.

Two readings are published for every market, with a weight on each. The temptation is to look at the preferred one and close the tab. That gets it exactly backwards: the preferred count tells you what to do if you are right, and the alternate tells you what is happening if you are not.

Which makes it the practically useful one. If the alternate says the same move continues by a different route, being wrong is survivable. If the alternate says price goes straight through your entry to somewhere far below, that is the trade to size small or skip — regardless of how confident the preferred count looks.

Use it for

Where the stop really belongs

Often the honest stop is not the preferred count’s invalidation but the level where both readings are dead. Above that, you are being stopped out by a count that is still working.

Use it for

Sizing

Two readings pointing the same way is a different trade from a 55/45 split pointing opposite ways, even when the preferred target is identical. The weight is on the panel; use it.

Use it for

Knowing early

When the weight starts moving toward the alternate over successive revisions, the market is telling you something before either invalidation is touched.

Choosing

Take the big, well-shaped moves. Leave the rest.

A wave count is not equally useful all the time. It is at its best when a large move is beginning from a level that is close by — a third wave leaving a completed second, a fifth leaving a completed fourth. It is close to useless in the middle of a correction, where the structure is real but the room is not.

The test is arithmetic, not aesthetic. Measure from here to the target zone, and from here to the invalidation. If the first is not several times the second, the count may well be right and the trade still not worth taking.

WORTH TAKINGnowtargetinvalidation

Far more room to the target than to the level that ends the idea.

LEAVE ITnowtargetinvalidation

The target is barely further away than the stop. Nothing to be paid for the risk.

Prefer third wavesThe longest and most direct move in the structure, and the one whose failure shows up quickest.
Enter near the invalidationThe same count is a good trade near its stop and a poor one halfway to its target. Distance is what you are paid for.
Skip correctionsFourth waves and flats are where counts get re-cut most often. Being right about a correction rarely pays.
One instrument, one ideaFive positions on five markets that all resolve on the same macro wave is one position with five commissions.
While you are in

The count keeps working after you have acted.

The map is kept on a timetable: every market is re-read in full once a day, against the count it accepted the day before, and the levels on the chart are the current reading’s. So the thing you are holding is not the count you entered on — it is whatever the count says now. Five things change, and each one means something specific.

Invalidation touched

The reading is over. Not a dip to buy — the count that argued for the trade no longer exists.

Scenario weight falls

The alternate is gaining. Look at what it says happens next before adding anything.

Revision number moves

The count was re-cut. Read it again; the level you set your stop from may have moved.

Working label turns plain

The wave you were riding has closed. The next one is a different trade, not a continuation.

Target zone reached

What you came for. The count owes you nothing beyond it.

The one rule that matters: the invalidation is not a suggestion. It is the price at which the reason for the position stopped existing. A position held below it is no longer the trade you took — it is a new trade, with no analysis behind it, that you have not decided to make.

In practice

A routine that takes four minutes.

  1. Open the weekly. Say out loud which way the structure points. If the answer is “unclear”, you are done with that market today.
  2. Drop to the daily. Find the wave in progress and its target zone. This is the trade, if there is one.
  3. Read the alternate. Ask what it costs you to be wrong, and where both readings are dead.
  4. Measure. Distance to the target against distance to the invalidation. If it is not several times over, stop here.
  5. Then, and only then, go to the hourly and the fifteen. Time the entry and place the stop under the level you already chose.
  6. Write down the invalidation. It is the only number you have promised yourself in advance.
For programs

Everything on this page is also available as JSON.

Desk includes a read-only API key over the same accepted counts: both scenarios, every degree, the target zones, the invalidations and the written thesis — the whole hierarchy or the scales and instruments you name. No price data; you have that already.

What Desk opens →

What this is not

Sir Elliott is analytical software. It publishes a structural reading of a market and the level at which that reading fails; it does not know your account, your horizon or your risk, and nothing here is personalised investment advice or an automated trading system. Elliott Wave interpretation is probabilistic — more than one valid count can exist at once, scenario weight is the model’s own relative assessment rather than a win rate, and target zones are areas rather than appointments.