3:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. The S&P 500 futures fell sharply midway through the session, perhaps in response to news reports that President Trump has signed a letter firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Although there is a letter, Powell has not yet been fired. After reaching 6241, the futures immediately returned to thir prior level in the 6280s and 6290s.

The decline gave wave 4 temporary new life, stretching its end point to 6241. That was wave 5’s starting point, and the uptrending wave is still underway.

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. The S&P 500 E-mini futures continued to fall overnight, reaching 6257.75 and the reversing.

What does it mean? Elliott Wave Theory analysis sees the decline as wave 4, a correction with in a larger uptrending 5th wave. The rise that followed is the 1st subwave of a smaller wave 5, which is in turn a subwave of the larger wave 5.

When the smaller 5th wave ends, it will also be the end of the larger 5th wave and of a still larger 3rd wave, which began on June 30 and is the parent wave of both.

A larger 4th-wave downward correction than we’ve seen for awhile will then begin.

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

Waves Now Underway

[Updated to match the afternoon analysis.]

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)
• 5{-13} (unnamed), 7/14/2025, 6529.75 (up)
• 5{-14} (unnamed), 7/16/2025, 6241 (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 16, 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.

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

License

Based on a work at www.timbovee.com.