3:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. The S&P 500 futures fell during most of the session, returning to the 5740s. Elliott Wave Theory: A case may be made that the rising 5th wave that began on March 24 ended on March 25 at 5837.25. Or, prhaps, everything since March 24 have been small subwaves of wave 5, which has been in its 1st subwave, and today’s decline has been wave 2 within wave 5.

For the moment I’m going to hold making a decision, although I’m leaning tward the wave 2 scenario.

Here’s a close-up chart:

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 3:13 p.m., 15-minute bars]

The low point at 5852.25 was the start of rising wave 5. The peak at 5837.25 was either the end of the 5th wave or the end of the 1st subwave within the 5th wave.

9:35 a.m. New York time

What’s happening now? The S&P 500 E-mini futures fell overnight from the 5830s to the 5810s and then worked its way back to the 5830s.

What does it mean? Elliott Wave Theory interprets the pause as a low-degree correction within the larger uptrendng 5th wave that began on March 24. The 5th wave is a subwave, wave C, within a stilll larger 4th-wave upward correction that began in mid-March.

Three degees high in the fractal structure of the chart, the peak of February 19 was the start of wave C{-6}, the final subwave of a 4th-wave downward correction that began on December 16, 2024.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 3:30 p.m., hourly bars, with volume]

What does Elliott Wave Theory say? Here are the waves that underlie the morning’s analyses as they appeared on the chart.

Principal Analysis

• Rising wave 4{-9} is underway and internally is in rising wave C{-10}.
• Wave C{-10} is in its final subwave, wave 5{-11}.
• When wave 5{-11} is complete, it will also be the end of wave C{-10} and most likely the end of the 4th wave upward correction, wave 4{-9}.
• When wave 4{-9} is complete, downtrending wave 5{-9} will begin, carrying the price back to the 5530s and most likely lower.

Long-term Waves

These are the waves currently in progress under my principal analysis. Each line on the list shows the wave number, with the subscript in curly brackets, the traditional degree name, the starting date, the starting price of the S&P 500 E-mini futures, and the direction of the wave.

• S&P 500 Index:
• 5{+3} Supercycle, 7/8/1932, 4.40 (up)
• 5{+2} Cycle, 12/9/1974, 60.96 (up)
• 5{+1} Primary, 3/6/2009, 666.79 (up)
• 5{0} Intermediate, 2/11/2016, 1810.10 (up)
• 3{-1} Minor, 3/23/2020, 2191.36 (up)
• 3{-2} Minute, 10/13/2022, 3491.58 (up)
• S&P 500 Futures
• 5{-3} Minuette, 4/18/2024, 4963.50 (up)
• 3{-4} Subminuette, 8/7/2024, 5182 (up)
• 4{-5} Micro, 12/16/2024, 6163.75 (down)
• C{-6} Submicro, 2/19/2025, 6166.50 (down)
• 5{-7} (no name), 3/3/2025, 6000.50 (down)
• 3{-8} (no name), 3/5/2025, 5869.40 (down)
• 4{-9} (no name), 3/11/2025, 5534 (up)

Reading the chart. Price movements — waves – – in Elliott Wave Theory analysis are labeled with numbers within trending waves and letters with corrective waves. The subscripts — numbers in curly brackets — designate the wave’s degree, which, in Elliott Wave analysis, means the relative position of a wave within the larger and smaller structures that make up the chart. R.N. Elliott, who in the 1930s developed the form of analysis that bears his name, viewed the chart as a complex structure of smaller waves nested within larger waves, which in turn are nested within still larger waves. In mathematics it’s called a fractal structure, where at every scale the pattern is similar to the others.

Learning and other resources. Elliott Wave analysis provides context, not prophecy. As the 20th century semanticist Alfred Korzybski put it in his book Science and Sanity (1933), “The map is not the territory … The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.” And I would add, in the ever-changing markets, we can judge that similarity of structure only after the fact.

See the menu page Analytical Methods for a rundown on where to go for information on Elliott Wave analysis.

By Tim Bovee, Portland, Oregon, March 26, 2025

Disclaimer

Tim Bovee, Private Trader tracks the analysis and trades of a private trader for his own accounts. Nothing in this blog constitutes a recommendation to buy or sell stocks, options or any other financial instrument. The only purpose of this blog is to provide education and entertainment.

No trader is ever 100 percent successful in his or her trades. Trading in the stock and option markets is risky and uncertain. Each trader must make trading decisions for his or her own account, and take responsibility for the consequences.

License

All content on Tim Bovee, Private Trader by Timothy K. Bovee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Based on a work at www.timbovee.com