3:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. The S&P 500 futures declined throughout the day from Thursday’s peak, 6308.75.

Elliott Wave Theory: The peak appears to be the end of a rising 3rd wave that began on August 5 from 6313.25, and the beginning of a 4th-wave downtrend.

The fall is not yet very deep, and that produces a lack of strong confidence in the analysis. The price could reverse today in the half hour remaining before the end of the session, or it could do so on Monday. Whenever, a swift reversal would suggest that my theory is wrong and wave 3 is still underway.

If instead the price continues to fall, then my theory was correct and wave 4 is underway.

Time will tell.

The waves in play appear as wave 3{-9} and wave 4{-9} within rising wave 3{-8}, a subwave of rising wave 1{-7}.

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. S&P 500 E-mini futures reached a high of 6508.75 overnight.

What does it mean? I’ve moved the chart into a closer view in order to see the details of the present rise, which began on August 1. Elliott Wave Theory sees that rise as the 1st subwave within a 5th wave. For clarity, I’ll describe the waves using the chart’s method: A wave number followed by a subscript in curly brackets noting the degree’s distance from Intermediate degree (presently wave 5{-0}, which began in February 2016).

Wave 1{-7} has been underway since August 1, as has its parent, wave 5{-6}. Internally, wave1{-7} is in its made subwave, wave 3{-8}, which in turn is in wave 3{-9}.

Wave 5{-6} is the final subwave within wave 3{-5}, which began on April 25, and which is a subwave of wave 1{-4}, one degree higher, which began on April 7.

Encompassing all is wave 1{-3}, which began on October 13, 2022.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 9:35 a.m., 4-hour 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)
• 1{-2} Minute, 7/31/2025, 6468.50 (down)
• S&P 500 Futures
• 1{-3} Minuette, 10/13/2022, 4603 (up)
• 1{-4} Subminuette, 4/7/2025, 4832 (up)
• 3{-5} Micro, 4/21/2025, 5127.25 (up)
• 5{-6} Submicro, 8/1/2025, 6249.50 (up)
• 1{-7} Minuscule, 8/1/2025, 6349.50 (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, August 15, 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