Elliott Wave or NEoWave? Which on is better?

A common question people often ask is: Should I learn Elliott Wave or NEoWave? Which one is better? And do I need to study Elliott Wave first before moving on to NEoWave?

Let’s break it down.

The classic Elliott Wave theory originates from the book Elliott Wave Principle, written and compiled by Robert Prechter and A.J. Frost.
Both authors were not the original creators of the theory .. they simply collected and organized the works of Ralph Nelson Elliott, whose ideas were scattered across various sources, and compiled them into a single book.

Given the context of that era .. the trading environment, technology, and available tools .. it’s fair to say R.N. Elliott developed the theory to a level that was almost complete for his time.

Back then, there were no PCs, no laptops, no internet… and charts had to be drawn by hand.
In that sense, Elliott was genuinely a genius.

But despite its impact and popularity, the classical version still contains many weaknesses.
And someone eventually stepped in to identify those flaws .. a passionate young man named Glenn Neely, who dedicated himself to studying wave theory seriously and wanted to eliminate the criticism that Elliott Wave was nothing more than “a subjective theory that doesn’t work in real trading.”

Because he was born in an era where computers were emerging and technology was accelerating, he had the thought of applying science and mathematics to make wave analysis more accurate and repeatable.

After more than seven years of work, Neely published an extremely complex .. and extremely difficult .. book: Mastering Elliott Wave.
This book essentially became the foundation of early NEoWave, because nearly all of the first-generation NEoWave concepts were packed inside it.


So… which one is better?

The answer, without hesitation: Mastering Elliott Wave wins by a landslide.

Yes, it’s difficult.
But that difficulty comes with benefits:

– Higher accuracy
– Clearer structure
– Much stronger logic

These are things classical Elliott Wave simply cannot do.

The blue book (Elliott Wave Principle) lacks something crucial that the red book (MEW) provides:
a practical and functional Degree system.
(The truth is, even MEW’s Degree system isn’t perfect .. which is why I eventually built my own system on top of it.)

Neely also introduced time and price principles to calculate Degrees .. determining which waves are major, which are minor, etc.
This method does not exist in the classical version at all, which only provides extremely abstract degree labels.


So, do you need to learn Elliott Wave first before studying NEoWave?

Let me give you a simple analogy.

Elliott Wave = manual transmission car
NEoWave = automatic transmission car

The question is:
“If you buy an automatic car, do you need to learn manual first?”

The answer: Absolutely not.

Even though NEoWave originated from Elliott Wave, the internal logic has diverged significantly.
(And in today’s world, NEoWave has already moved far past the classical version.)

In fact, I personally believe you shouldn’t study both at the same time .. especially if you’re a beginner .. because the rules of the two systemas will conflict with ech other and waste your time.

For example, some patterns that classical Elliott Wave strictly prohibits, NEoWave has tested and proven to be possible.

In summary:

NEoWave takes the material from classical Elliott Wave and develops it into a far more precise, detailed system.
But even NEoWave still has flaws that make real-world trading difficult .. which is exactly why I’m working on improving and modernizing it.

At the end of the day, no theory lasts forever, because markets are driven by humans.
The psychology of today’s generation isn’t the psychology of people 100 years ago.
And modern markets influenced by AI-driven trading are not the same as Elliott’s era or Neely’s era.

This is why we need new-generation theories built for new-generation data.

- written by me(brainiak/ew-lab) thanks for reading!