When I spoke in San Francisco on 2 June, I wanted to avoid something that is unfortunately very common in our industry.
Hindsight.
Most market forecasts look impressive after the event. The challenge is to form a view before the market moves and then have the discipline to stick with it while events unfold.
Three days before the seminar, on 30 May 2026, I emailed a set of 19 Bitcoin charts to the fund manager who had sponsored the conference. The purpose was simple. I wanted a permanent record of the analysis before I stepped on stage.
At the time, Bitcoin was trading around 73,808.
The first chart simply established where Bitcoin was at that moment. No predictions. No clever explanations. Just a starting point. I made sure the date and time of writing were captured!
The next question was whether the advance from the April lows had completed a larger corrective structure or whether another important decline still lay ahead.
One of the challenges with Elliott Waves is that markets do not always reveal their intentions immediately. Counts evolve. Alternate interpretations emerge. The objective is not perfection. The objective is to remain aligned with the weight of evidence.
This is one of the reasons I continue to use Elliott Waves after nearly four decades. It forces us to ask what the market is actually doing rather than what we hope it will do. Notice that none of these charts relied on news, economic forecasts, interest-rate predictions, or opinions from television commentators. The analysis was entirely derived from market structure.
Remember, the reason why we are looking at the BULL phase at this time is that even though BTCUSD has come down so much from the highs, we wish to be comfortable with our interpretation of where we are in the cycle.
I could see that when analyzed this way, every leg of the upmove has a certain symmetry. And that is important for me.
In the chart above, I have used the familiar technique you all know from my book “Five Waves to Financial Freedom” to determine the target for wave 5.
A machine could probably produce some Wave counts. But I prefer doing this manually because it comes down to human judgment. These intermediate charts were part of the process I showed during the seminar. They demonstrate something that many beginners find surprising. Good Elliott Wave analysis is not about finding one count and defending it forever. It is about continuously refining a count as new information becomes available. Look again at how I used the extreme top as an Irregular Wave B top! What made me choose that? It was a 3-wave move from the point I placed the label A!
By the time we reached this stage, the bearish case had become considerably stronger. Many traders falter when they arrive at this point. They will ask themselves this: “What if we have commenced a new bull cycle from the 59930 low?” Bitcoin is acting crazily, just as always! It is always wise to keep an open mind, but a trader needs to have conviction. He cannot act when he has two contrary ideas. Either he is bearish, or he is bullish. If his analysis tells him we are still in bear territory, he has to act on that call, not on what his emotions dictate!
As you can see, I have stated clearly that my expectation is that BTCUSD will dip back and likely head towards 58,000. These charts were prepared on 30 May 2026, when BTC was at 73,892, and emailed! It was not kept safe to present only if it worked.
Please pay attention here! The short-term (Hourly) charts show that 5 waves are already nearing completion! Perhaps we should wait for a recovery before getting involved?
The chart above was the last one I emailed that day. And the message to you, dear reader, as you are probably a person interested in mastering this fascinating subject, is to know which battle to pick to fight your war. As it turned out, we never got that recovery! It just went sideways for another day and collapsed directly to reach 59,073.
Yes, we missed this particular move down. But were we looking to buy at the 73000 level? And is a direct sale the only way you could have made money? Of course not. For the small trader, knowing that he or she shouldn’t be ‘long’ is itself an edge. For the more sophisticated trader, there are other ways to make money from the perception that we could be heading towards 58,000 when we were at 73,000 levels.
The shorter-term picture suggests that Bitcoin may still be tracing out a complex correction. Complex corrections are notoriously frustrating because they often persuade traders that a new trend has begun before reversing again. For that reason, I am reluctant to become aggressively bullish until the market itself provides clearer evidence.
That may happen next week. It may happen next month. The chart will tell us when it is ready.
The Bigger Lesson
Readers often ask me why I continue to rely on Elliott Waves after all these years.
The answer is not that Elliott Waves predicts every market move perfectly.
It does not. No method does. The real value lies elsewhere.
It provides a structured way of thinking. It helps identify high-probability opportunities. It helps define risk.
Most importantly, it encourages preparation before the market moves rather than explanation after the market moves.
A few days ago, I shared a similar example involving CVS Health. That stock has since advanced beyond 103 after being highlighted as a low-risk opportunity before my San Francisco seminar. Bitcoin and CVS are completely different markets. Yet the principle is exactly the same.
The market does not reward excitement. It rewards preparation.
For those interested in learning the framework in greater depth, details of my online course can be found at:
Whether you use my approach or develop your own, I hope these charts encourage you to spend less time reacting to markets and more time preparing for them.
The results can be surprisingly different.
-Ramki Ramakrishnan
23 June 2026