Short session today, holiday tomorrow. The markets will close early today, at 1 p.m. New York time, in anticipation of the 4th of July holiday on Friday. The markets will be closed on Friday, except for an abbreviated futures session, which I shall monitor and file an analysis if anything interesting happens. I shall post today’s afternoon analysis at 12:30 p.m. New York time.

Half an hour before the closing bell. Having reached a low of 6270.50 overnight, the S&P 500 futures rose throughout the session, reaching into the 6330s as the end drew near.

Elliott Wave Theory: I’ll use the labeling method that appears on the chart: A wave number followed by a subscript, in curly brackets, that tells the position of the degree within the fractal structure relative to Intermediate degree.

The present rise is wave 3{-14}, a subwave within wave 3{-13}. Both are encapsulated within wave 3{-12}, which began on June 30, a subwave of wave 5{-11}, which in turn is a subwave of wave 5{-10}, which began on June 22 from 5959.

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. The S&P 500 E-mini futures fluctuated sideways for much of the overnight trading, and then shot upward in the span of 6 minutes, from the 6270s to the 6290s, when the Employment Situation Report was released, a day early because of the pending holiday.

The price reached a new higher high, 6296, and then immediately retreated, returning to the range within which it had traded overnight. It then rose again, reaching a new higher high.

What does it mean? My Elliott Wave Theory analysis sees the rise and retreat as subwaves with an ongoing 3rd wave that began its rise on June 30. Wave is in turn a subwave within a rising 5th wave one degree higher.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 12:30 p.m., 20-minute bars, with volume] 

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, 4/24/2025, 5260 (up)
• 5{-7} Minuscule, 4/25/2025, 5550 (up)
• 5{-8} (unnamed), 5/7/2025, 5596 (up)
• 5{-9} (unnamed), 5/23/2025, 5756.50 (up)
• 5{-10} (unnamed), 6/22/2025, 5959 (up)
• 5{-11} (unnamed), 6/27/2025, 6183.25 (up)
• 3{-12} (unnamed), 6/30/2025, 6224 (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, July 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.