I'm often asked how I keep track of all the rules and guidelines when trying to count with Elliott. Frankly it is a bit of a tedious process. But for me, it help create good stop loss price-points. If I'm wrong... then I know exactly where I am wrong and my stop goes at that line. Having said that... outside of Elliott for a moment, the most important thing to know is that almost all moves in any market are either divided into 3 wave or 5 wave patterns. If a trader focused only on that I would venture to say he/she would be successful. Here is a very straight-forward example of a three wave pattern with the last leg sub-divided into 5.
