How to not know and still make a profitable trade
It is a common misconception that people who navigate the markets for a living know what is going to happen next. Unfortunately, this is almost never the case and the future remains unknown no matter how good one gets at dealing with that uncertainty. That’s why successful traders and investors have made it their second nature to keep an open mind for the possibility of being wrong. In our case, this means having an alternative bullish Elliott Wave count, even if we’re generally bearish, or vice versa. Here is how this recently worked out in Bitcoin.
The chart above was included in our Pro analysis of Bitcoin, published on October 26th, 2025. As visible, we had identified the decline from over $126k to under $104k as a five-wave impulse pattern, marked 1-2-3-4-5. And this is where things start to get more difficult to decipher.
Impulses point in the direction of the larger structure. If the larger structure was going to be a big sell-off, then this pattern would be its first wave, labeled (1). Alas, this impulse could also fit in the position of wave c) of an expanding flat correction in wave (4), which would’ve sent Bitcoin to a new record in wave (5). There was no way to know which one it is in advance. How to deal with that uncertainty in practice? By simply keeping both possibilities in mind.
Similar Elliott Wave setups occur in the Forex, commodity and stock markets, as well. Our Elliott Wave Video Course can teach you how to uncover them yourself!
At a minimum, the Elliott Wave theory states that every impulse is followed by a three-wave correction. Second waves often retrace back to the area of the 61.8% Fibonacci level. That’s when we expected the market to decide if the price was going up or down in the weeks ahead. It wasn’t our decision to make. We simply had to wait for more info from the market. A week later, when it was time for our next Pro analysis of Bitcoin on November 2nd, the decision seemed to have been made already.
Wave (2) looked like a complete a-b-c zigzag correction ending at $116,381. The following drop to $106,303 strongly suggested that the market has chosen the bearish alternative. We labeled it i-ii-iii-iv-v in wave 1 of (3). If this count was correct, a major selloff in wave 3 of (3) was likely to begin as soon as wave 2 was over.
This was the time to join the bears, not before. We not only had the confirmation from the market that lower prices were coming, but we were also able to identify a concrete stop-loss level at $116,381, because wave 2 cannot exceed the starting point of wave 1. The updated 4h chart of Bitcoin shows how the situation unfolded.
Earlier today, Bitcoin barely held above $82k, down by over $28k since our November 2nd bearish analysis. $116,381 was never threatened and this sell-off looks just like a third wave, since it is already longer than wave (1). The point is that we never actually knew that it was coming, yet patience and knowledge of the Elliott Wave rules helped us to anticipate and prepare for it.
This is how to deal with uncertainty and doubt in practice to still make a profitable trade out of it. The first step is to acknowledge our ignorance and wait for the market to tilt the odds one way or the other. And anyone who claims to be sure of what will happen next in any market, is either not being honest with you or deluding himself.
In our Elliott Wave PRO subscriptions we provide analyses of Bitcoin, Gold, Crude Oil, EURUSD, USDCAD, USDJPY and the S&P 500 every Sunday and Wednesday! Check them out now!
