January 19, 2024
Shortly after the last update here, the market expanded one more time in this run to the 49000 mark. It was a volatile week for the market, with a rapid sell off from that new 52-week high. And that is it, for this run.
There is a lot of speculation about the why and how, and the relation of all this noise to the approval of a group of spot bitcoin exchange traded products.
It is surely a curious situation that the ETP/ETF approvals coincided with the market top and a sell-off shortly after. But that had very little or nothing to do with it. The ETP stuff was just noise on the market. Noise and news don’t make the market. Some keen observers on TradingView have correctly expressed a weakening of the bitcoin market. Every run comes to an end. The Elliott Wave Principle tells the story better than any tool out there.
Elliott Wave theory is not easy to use. For the most part, I find that people don’t spend enough research time for understanding the nuances, or even the basics.
But it is not easy to correctly label waves in a market. Multiple assignments may be valid any time, and this is often predicated on the bias of the analyst. For crying out loud there are still people who think of this market as a bear market.
A carefully examination of every wave and trough of last years market tells a compelling story. It tells me that the market from September 2023 to January 11 comprises a whole, coherent, consistent, and closed Elliott wave. It should be labelled as the first wave of five of a bull market that should extend through 2024.
Its foundation was the structure created in the first phase from November 2022 to the end of summer of 2023, a 1-2 wave sequence in Intermediate degree. Since then, September, Intermediate degree wave three has been operational, of which wave one in Minor degree is now complete.
Minor wave one has been limited in size by existing structural resistances of market. Just dollars on top of the current market high at 49000 USD, is the 0.618 Fibonacci level of the retrace of the bear market of 2022, which coincides with an apex of the major inflection point in 2022.
The market spent most of December in a narrow range below this level closing ongoing third waves, correcting them, and finishing their fifth waves. This was a very complex affair, and caused a lot of confusion among traders and analysts. I have not seen a meaningful analysis until now, in my own work. And I was confused too, to be honest, until the last two 52-week highs occurred as sharp spikes.
Since 1/11 the market has been selling off almost ten thousand points from peak to low, so far. This is wave two. The Elliott Wave Principle gives guidance to the depth of second waves. They can be very destructive, retracing the market often by 61.8%. But as a first guidance, it should retrace to the extend of the fourth wave of one lower degree. As of today, this criterion has been met. Whether the retrace drops below that, remains to be seen.