Elliott Wave Count -- How do you know if you have the right wave count?

The article here striked this thought in me
http://www.elliottwave.com/freeupdates/archives/2008/09/03/How-Do-You-Know-If-You-Have-the-Right-Wave-Count.aspx

So how do we know if have the right count?
The following is lifted off from the website:

Here's a short-cut list of the personalities you should be looking for:

1) Impulse waves always subdivide into five distinct waves, and they have an energetic personality that likes to cover a lot of ground in a short time. That means that prices travel far in a short period of time and that the angle or slope of an impulse wave is steep.

2) Corrective wave patterns have a sluggish personality, the opposite of impulse waves. Corrective waves are slow-moving affairs that seemingly take days and weeks to end, and, during that time, price tends not to change much. Also, corrective wave patterns tend to contain numerous overlapping waves, which appear as choppy or sloppy price action.


Ok, that seems pretty normal and without much details. What strikes me most was the sentence that "each Elliott wave has a distinct personality, and personality supports labeling."

Example, wave 2 are often deep, and typically end on low volume, and typically retrace 0.382 of wave 1. So if we see a wave that retraces about 0.382 of the previous wave, yet ends on high volume, it is more likely an A-B-C count than a 1-2-3 count. It is the personality of the waves that count.

Another example... wave 4 usually meanders sideways for an extended period, with volume well below that of wave 3...


Guess I need to research more and pay more attention to the personality types of each individual waves... The alternate count recently released by DBS seems to hold some weight, although it appears to be different from the wave counts of Robert Pretcher, head of Elliott Wave International... It seems to me that Pretcher is at wave C now, not wave A as counted by DBS...

So much more to learn :(


Update: I just realised there's a section on wave personality in Elliott Wave International's Lesson 7. Going to learn more about it :)

A nice diagram from Elliott Wave International: