3:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. The S&P 500 futures fell sharply during the session, reaching within cents of 6400.

Elliott Wave Theory: The decline was sufficient to disprove the prior principal analysis, that saw wave 5 as underway. The Wave 4 downward correction continues and has completed two of its subwaves, waves A and B. The final subwave, wave C, is in progress and has reached below the end of wave A, which is typical of C waves.

When wave C is complete — and that will likely be very soon — the 4th wave correction will also be complete, and uptrending wave 5 will have begun.

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. The S&P 500 E-mini futures rose overnight into the 6440s and then began to fall..

What does it mean? The rise, Elliott Wave Theory suggests, are the first steps within a low-degree 5th wave. The preceding 4th wave ended on July 28 at the 61.8% Fibonacce retracement level of preceding 3rd wave.

It’s possible that the July 28 low was the end of the first subwave, an A wave, within the 4th-wae downward correction, and that the subsequent rise was wave B. Under this alternative analysis, the decline that began overnight is wave C within the 4th wave.

If the price falls to 6415 or so, the alternative scenario, wave 4 continues, is probably the more likely analysis. If the price rises to 6450, the the principal scenario — wave 5 is underway — is the better of two scenarios.

For the moment, my principal analysis has wave 5 as having begun on July 28.

All of this is happening within a nested series of three 5th waves, which are in turn part of a rising 3rd wave that began on July 16

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 3:30 p.m., 20-minute bars, with volume] 

Waves Now Underway

[Updated to conform with the closing 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)
• 3{-15} (unnamed), 7/16/2025, 6288.25 (up)
• 5{-16} (unnamed), 7/22/2025, 6318.75 (up)
• 5{-17} (unnamed), 7/24/2024, 6391.50 (up)
• 4{-18} (unnamed), 7/27/224, 6457.75 (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 29, 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.