3:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour until the closing bell. The S&P 500 futures began to rise overnight and kept it up during the session, reaching a high today so far of 6050.

Elliott Wave Theory: The declining C-wave that began on June 11, is a subwave of a 4th-wave downward correction. Wave C if typical will have three subwaves. It finished the first of them, wave A, overnight, and the rise that followed, wave B, may have ended with the session high. It’s ambiguous, and on the chart the principal analysis sees wave B as ongoing. A firm reversal to the downside would lend credence to wave B having already ended.

The chart at this point resembles a bowl of alphabet soup. Here are the wave groups as they appear on the chart, with the wave’s number of desgrees distant from Intermediate degree indicated after the wave number in curly brackets.

Big to small: Declining wave {4-11} is in its final subwave, declining wave C{-12}, which in turn in in its middle subwave, rising wave B{-13}.

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. The S&P 500 E-mini futures fell overnight, reaching as low as the 5980s as the session’s opening bell approached.

What does it mean? The decline confirmed the correctness of yesterday’s session close Elliott Wave Theory analysis: The final subwave, wave C, within a larger downward correction, wave 4, begun.

Here’s what to expect. As is often the case, expectations are the same as guarantees

In form, the 4th-wave downwrd correction is a Flat, meaning that wave A had three subwaves. The C wave in a Flat typically ranges from the about the size as the A wave up to 1.68 times the A-wave’s size.

From there, it’s simple math.

Note that S&P 500 futures are priced in 25-cent increments, so while the math can produce results in one-cent increments. In real life, we have to round the results to the nearest quarter.

• Wave A was a shorty, $96 long.
• Wave C began at 6024.75
• Subtract wave A’s length from wave C’s beginning, 6024.75 – 96, and we have a minimum length for wave C of 5928.96. Round it to 5939.
• The low so far in wave C is 5987.75, so by this analysis wave C has about $50 to go before reaching below the end of wave A, 5928.75.

Then there’s the maximum expectation. Here’s the math:

• Take the length of wave A, $96, and multiply it by 1.69. The maximum expected length of wave C is $161.28
• Wave C began at 6024.75
• Subtract the expected length, 6024.75 – 161.28, and we get a maximum target of 5863.47. Round it to 5863.50
• Subtractr the expected price from the end point of wave A, 5928,75 – 5863.47, and we get $65.28 below the end of wave B.

How long will wave C take? Impossible to say with confidence. Wave A ended on the day it began. Wave B dragged on for six days. Wave C is now in its second day. The best we can do is take a guess on that meager data.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 3:30 p.m., 35-minute bars, with volume] 

Elliott Wave Theory wave labels. Each wave listed on the charts has two components: A wave number, and a subscript in curly brackets that place the wave’s position in the fractal strucutre in relationship to Intermediate degree. The present Intermediate degree, wave 5{0}, began its rise on February 11, 2016 from 1810.10 and is still underway.

The waves referred to on the chart are as follows.

Principal analysis: Upward correction wave 5{-2} is underway and within it is working through a nested series of initial subwaves, wave 1{-3} down to wave 1{-5}. One degree lower, rising wave 3{-6} is underway and is in its final subwave, wave 5{-7},

Within wave 5{-7}, uptrending wave 5{-8} is in its final stage, uptrending wave 5{-9}.

Within wave 5{-9}, its middle subwave, wave 3{-10}, is underway. Internally, wave 3{-10} is in its next to the last subwave, wave 4{-11}, a downward correction that began from 6016.50.

Wave 4{-11} is in its final subwave, declining wave C{-12}.

Waves Now Underway

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)
• 5{-2} Minute, 4/7/2025, 4832 (up)
• S&P 500 Futures
• 1{-3} Minuette, 4/7/2025, 4832 (up)
• 1{-4} Subminuette, 4/7/2025, 4832 (up)
• 1{-5} Micro, 4/7/2025, 4832 (up)
• 3{-6} Submicro, 4/21/2025, 4832 (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, June 12, 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.