Review by Steven Evans, February 1, 2009

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This review will cover as one package the Elliot Wave International’s three packages, Short-Term Update, Financial Forecast, and Elliot Wave Theorist. The reason is that just buying the Short Term Update (at $39/month) is like looking up close at a Monet Painting (e.g., London. The Waterloo Bridge). You see every stroke and line but can’t really tell what the big picture is all about, while the Financial Forecast gives you the big picture, but you will miss far too much of what this service has to provide if you are just getting commentary once a month. However if you buy the Short Term Update and just one of the others, you get all three for the same in their bundled price — so you might as well think of it as $59 (bundled price) for one package that comes in three parts. So just what is this package?

The answer to that requires some commentary. The Elliot Wave Theory essentially says that all the commentary you get from all the talking heads on Wall Street is just that — made-up drivel that tells you little. Rather, the market is not a rational reaction to the daily economic news but is driven by an overall social mood (positive to negative), reflected in a subsequent herding behavior, and is essentially fractal (any part is similar to the larger part at any size you select). The market moves in determined and predictable waves, and if you properly identify the direction and status of the wave, you will have a very good picture of the ongoing trend. The Short Term Update gives you this “local” view of the trend, although they do show it in context of the Big Picture, but the other two publications focus on the Big Picture to be sure you understand the overall market direction. Thus this service is offering a compass to ascertain the ongoing direction of the market, both short term and long.

Although the service may seem initially like a kind of technical charting analysis, it differs significantly from this by being grounded on an underlying theory about how human behavior operates and postulates an underlying wave theory that structures all the ongoing market moves. Virtually without exception, there are no individual stock recommendations whatsoever. It is a compass on where the market is in its cycle, and as a result, where it is likely going. It is actually an order of magnitude more subtle and sophisticated than merely technical charting since it operates with what can be called “a normative theory;” that it, it both describes and explains the markets ongoing moves through these built-in wave cycles being reflected, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and even over centuries.

With all that being said, so what use is it? I can tell you that it has bailed my fat out of the fire for more than two years now — with its compass reading on where the market is and where it is going. For example, gold was predicted to move up (so I profited both with an ETF and specific gold miners I obtained from other regular stock-recommending sites), and as gold reached about $1000/ounce, the Elliot Wave analysis indicated we were through. I sold around $950 using the Short Term Update, and rode gold back down. Using their Big Picture, I turned bearish at the end of 2007 although they called the actual top within a month of it, and the service has served me in good stead all these many months. If you had embraced the Elliot Wave compass, you could easily have avoided most of the bite of the bear. So I am a very happy camper.

The reason for this long review is that you can see that this service is a bit more cerebral than others, and does not, like most others, itemize a good stock buy this week or a good short. However, now that there are ETF’s, I can in fact short the DOW or S&P or go long on gold, etc. by connecting my purchases of ETF’s with the trends. I should note they have a lot of specialty additional services if you want to focus on commodities, for example, and other areas. Then you could trade specific ones since they track wheat, corn, oil, etc. In my opinion, this service which for my tight budget is somewhat expensive ($59/month) is extremely valuable, gives me what I think is a very good, tight, and remarkable accurate handle on where the overall market is going and where it is likely to go, and then when I couple that with either ETF’s or some individual stock recommendations (for example, Travis’ sleuthing brings us specific stocks that can be good insights), I have been doing utterly embarrassingly well for some time. I will keep with them.

Review by troppo32, February 7, 2009

What a joke - “Steve Evans” reviews three of Robert Prechters offerings and uses the same commentary for all three. This smacks of a marketing flack shilling his pubs and is not something I would expect from Stock Gumshoe.

I hope they screen the reviews to keep them honest.

And, yes, I will post this on all three “reviews”.

Review by kelly russell, February 14, 2009

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Hello all ! I’m just adding a “ditto” for Steven Evans’ descriptions of the ElliottWave offerings ( well done enough that I’ve nothing to add to give you a better picture of what the services do or what potential value they have).
To “Troppo32″ - read Steven’s descriptions again. He’s not “shortcutting” by reviewing all three as a “package” - they offer the broadest perspective as a group, though if you only had an interest in a very specific time frame you might want to pick only one of the bunch.
I’ve been most impressed with the perspective that this body of work offers- I’ll keep subscribing to their “bundle” for the forseeable future.

Review by jbb, March 23, 2009

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By no stretch of the imagination is this a “short term” newsletter. Although he does give himself an out in each letter by stating that if it goes beyond or below a certain number that he will change his mind but by then most of the move is over.

Review by Chuck, June 20, 2009

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I’ve subscribed to EW Financial Forecast since 2001. Additionally, I’ve subscribed to other newsletters (EW Theorist and Short Term Update) off-and-on since 2001.

Overall, I find the newsletter(s) valuable and I’ve continued to subscribe. My experience is that EW has been accurate about the major tops/bottoms and calling the inflection points that change trend of the market. They use a variety of indicators as supporting evidence for their Elliott Wave interpretation. Sometimes the wave will evolve over time and a top is predicted multiple times (at progressively higher levels).

The newsletter has guided me into several counter-intuitive moves — including the rally from 2003 to 2006, the Fall/2007 top and the renewed decline in early 2008. Remember that in early 2008, the consensus was for a shallow recession and everyone was picking a bottom in January and March 2008.

To be honest, they began calling the 2007 top far too early. That’s the “wave evolving” comment I made earlier.

Overall, it’s valuable for me.

Review by WARTHOG 1, July 11, 2009

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I have followed Elliot Wave via their free Club EWI updates since before the dot com crash. Having evaluated their projections against what actually ocurred in the markets /commodities / forex I was taken by the accuracy of their predictions. Although not always right, the beauty of this methodology is that it provides quantifiable and objective threshholds to determine when you are wrong.

From a “Macro” point of view I have not found anything that comes close to the accuracy of their predictions. Thankfully I took a paid subscription in 2007 and took their advice to get out of my equity positions and preserve cash prior to the 2008 crash. When my aquaintances were playing the hold and hope card during late 2008 and early 2009 watching their stock holdings cut in value by half, I was actively shorting the indexes based on the information from these services for profits that exceeded 100%. They called the real estate crash, the Fannie and Freddie implosion and have many other great market calls that have been extremely profitable.

If you are doubtful, please read Elloit Wave guru Robert Prechter’s book “Conquer the Crash”. Written in 2002, his market predictions based on Elloit Wave theory are unbelievable in their accuracy.

Although I have many other paid subscriptions, this is far and away the most valuable. I cannot overemphasize how profitable this information has been to my personal investment strategy.

I feel Elloit Wave is as close to the “Holy Grail” of predictive investment information as there is.

Review by Al, October 14, 2009

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Well, I have only been a subscriber (EWT + EWFF + EW STU)since Aug. 24 2009 and was still reviewing their archives when the call went out, by an early issue of Bob Precters’ EW Thoerist, that the odds favored the end of PrimaryWave2Up and the start of PrimaryWave3Down: the longest and most destructive wave down, according to EW Principle.

Anyways, I’m not a novice, and have my own trading system, so I merely observed the market going down but did notice that it failed to break major support at SPX 992 on 9/2/2009 so I went long.

In my experience when major support holds, the market rotates back up to test major resistance, which is what happened as the market rotated up and finally neared SPX 1070. Granted, the upsurge was typical PrimaryWave2 behavior, in that there was no let up after major support held, so I give EW FF and STU credit for alerting me about various wave “personalities”.

Anyways, that was their first and failed call to the end of PrimaryWave2Up and start of PrimariWave3Down. Their second call, also a failure, I will add, happened on Sep. 23. 2009 first by STU(short term update) then later “confirmed” by FF STU. However, once again, the market decline was stopped by major support holding in the area of SPX 1020 which resulted in the recent rally propelling DJIA to 10,000.

I expect it to continue until it hits the next major resistance, or fibonacci 50% retracement off the Oct 2007 highs and subsequent decline to 666 (March 2009 lows). I will add that once again I followed my own system and went long when I saw major support hold. In both cases, STU did not recommend going long and only had an opinion after the wave structure was complete: that is, after the move was done.

In summary, though they have had two major market turn calls fail, I will still keep them. EW does provide a sense of the strength of the particular wave underlying the trend and reasonable expectations for its end. In other words, if you don’t already have a trading system to work alongside EW, then it likely won’t benefit you much.

For an investor with no such system, one solution could be going long Put Leaps of at least 6 months duration for the major market calls. Such a strategy would not require much capital and could pay off handsomely if they are right.

To be fair, in reading the two books that they sent as a free gift (you pay shipping) for subscribing, they clearly state that their Elliot Wave analysis, by itself, is not a trading system. To this, I most heartily concur. Good luck to all.

Review by Wolfgangus, March 4, 2010

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Long time subscriber as much for the stimulating view of how the (investment) world works as for the advice. I once sent an excerpt to a friend whose wife saw it and wrote to me wanted something actionable. I wrote back the following: “I did not send this excerpt as any kind of investment advice. Prechter is a brilliant, self-assured iconoclast and his deeply contrarian, outrageous views fascinate me. Sometimes he’s right; sometimes he’s wrong, but he always has a unique perspective”.

That undersells him a bit. He has made some incredibly timely contrarian calls, most recently calling the bottom on the dollar. Everybody says “oh, sure” now, but when he made it, the dollar was the currency NOBODY wanted. That was only a few short weeks ago, but how quickly we forget. He has been less accurate on the stock market, but again, he called the bottom (a little early) last February, and is now calling for an imminent top (also early). That said, he missed most of the 2003-2006 and 1995-2000 rallies in equities. His most controversial call currently is for a top in the precious metals - in the face of George Soros and all the brilliant hedgies who love gold. Plus he is a confirmed deflationist despite all the money printing, stimulus, QE, etc. And finally, much to my liking, and unlike literally every other newsletter writer around, he cautions that making big money in the markets (and keeping it) is extremely rare and difficult.