What are the different types of Elliot waves?

Elliott Waves are classified into two different categories:

1. Impulse                                        AND
2. Corrections

Impulse is a 5 wave structure, (1,2,3,4,and 5) going in the main direction of the trend.
Impulse can move up or down, depending the main direction of the market.

Corrections are always a,b and c or a,b,c,d and e

Basic correction:

Impulse is always numbered while corrections are always identified in alphabets.

This is just to distinguish the difference between the two.

The whole structure from the base to the correction would look like this:

Elliott named nine degrees of waves as best he could with the data available at the time:

• Grand Supercycle: Multi-century
• Supercycle: Multi-decade
• Cycle: One to several years or perhaps decades.
• Primary: A few months to a few years.
• Intermediate: A few weeks to a few months.
• Minor: Weeks
• Minute: Days
• Minuette: Hours
• Sub-minuette: Minutes

Who was R.N.Elliott?

Ralph Nelson Elliott (28 July 1871–15 January 1948) was an Accountant, working for railroad companies in Central America and Mexico.

When R.N.Elliott was working in Central America, he was taken ill, which forced him onto early retirement and advised rest by his Doctors. 

Around this time he dedicated all his time to the study of behavior of the American Stock Markets.

In 1930's, Elliott researched the price history of 75 years of stock market data during his rest period.

In August 1938, along with Charles J. Collins, he published The Wave Principle. 

What is the wave principle?

It's a natural order of the markets.

Markets always behave in an orderly fashion right from a tiny movement on the tick chart up to yearly chart.

It's a wheel inside a wheel, in the sense that the same patterns are formed on a tick price as well as on a 1 minute, 5 minute, 30 minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly charts.

As an example:

 

This is a basic Elliott Wave structure.

The smaller waves are  similar to the larger waves.

On any time frame the basic structure of the waves will never change. They are always similar.

Ask any two Elliott Wave theorist: the position of the current market situation?

Most probably, 99% of the time, you would get two different answers. Both being Masters in their respective field.

This makes the study subjective. It's based on principles and guidelines. 

There's no clear cut theories. 

It's because, human nature is not constant!!!