Alternation as a Desk Habit, Not a Slogan
Turning Elliott’s alternation guideline into a short checklist you can run before locking a corrective count.
Alternation is easy to quote and hard to apply when a live B-wave is still forming. In our clinics we treat it as a desk habit: after sketching wave A, write one sentence about what wave B should not look like.
That sentence is usually about shape or complexity, not about price targets. If A was a sharp zigzag, we expect B to stretch sideways or deepen in time. If A already wandered, we watch for a cleaner B.
Hong Kong evening clinics often run on index futures charts where overnight gaps tempt traders to invent triangles that never complete. Alternation notes on the margin keep those inventions honest.
We do not grade students on predicting the next bar. We grade whether their written alternation expectation matches the marks they later accept as finished.
Keep the checklist short. Three lines on the chart margin beat a paragraph in a separate notebook you will not open under pressure.