3:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. The S&P 500 futures traded narrowly during the session, as though exhausted by yesterday’s hard fall.

The fall itself, looked at through a magnifying lens, had five subwaves. Arguably, the end of the dramatic fall following President Trump’s new tariffs announcement, at 5481, was the end of wave 3{-8}, and what follows is a very weak wave 4{-8}.

Or not. There’s no certainty here. I’ve kept the wave-3-underway scenario as my principal analysis keeping in mind the need to look for evidence of wave 4 having begun.

9:35 a.m. New York time

What’s happening now. After rapidly falling 5.1% after the closing bell, as overnight trading began, the S&P 500 E-mini futures traced a sideways pattern, fluctuating between the 5480s and the 5560s. The decline from the April 2 high, 5773.25, occurred as President Trump announced, after the closing bell, substantial new tariffs in response to existing tariffs.

What does it mean? The decline was sufficiently deep to require an Elliott Wave Theory re-analysis of the chart, which I have did for a late post-close analysis last night.

In the discussion that follows, I shall use the numbering system that appears on the chart. Each wave has a number or a letter followed by a subscript, in curly brackets, that shows the wave’s distance from Intermediate degree in the fractal structure of the chart. The present Intermediate wave is wave 5{0}, which began in February 2016.

And so to the new chart. The declining wave that began from 6166.50, on February 9 at the upper left-hand corner of the chart, is wave C{-6}, the final subwave of a downward correction, wave 4{-5}, that began on December 16, 2024 from 6163.75 and which is still underway.

Wave C{-6} is in its final subwave, wave C{-7}, which began on March 25 from 5835, and wave C{-7} is in its middle subwave, wave 3{-8}, which began on April 2 from 5773.25

Declining Wave C{-6} within declining wave 4{-5} continues, as it has since last February 19. The March 13 low, 5509.25, marked the end of Wave A{-7}. The March 25 high was the end of wave B{-7} and the decline that began on April 2, including the tariff drop, is wave C{-7} and is still underway. I count today’s decline as being wave 3{-8} within the parent C wave.

Wave C{-7} has two more subwaves remaining after its 3rd subwave: Wave 4{-8}, an upward correction, and wave 5{-8}, a downtrending wave that will complete wave C{-7}, and also its parent, wave C{-6}.

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

What does Elliott Wave Theory say? See the “What does it mean” section, above.

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. [Updated to match the 7:08 p.m. analysis.)

• 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)

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, April 3, 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