Holiday ahead. U.S. markets will be closed on Monday, August 1, for the Labor Day holiday. Trading will resume Monday evening for some futures, such as the S&P 500 E-mini futures that are analyzed here. The markets will begin their trading sessions on Tuesday, September 2.

3:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. The S&P 500 E-mini futures fell during the session reaching 6455.50 before entering a sideways fluctuation covering the 6450s to the 6470s.

Basically, there’s very little difference from what we saw after of the opening bell. Wave 4 is still underway, and within it, wave B is still underway — probably.

If the decline continues after the Labor Day holiday, then we can with confidence conclude that wave B ended on August 28, at 6523, and declining wave C, the final subwave of the 4th-wave correction, began from that point.

It’s a close call, but we’re not quite there yet.

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. The S&P 500 E-mini futures fell from 6518 at yesterday’s closing bell down to 6486.75 durng the overnight session, and then resumed its rise, sharply spiking and retreating in the span of 2 minutes after the Personal Consumption Expenditures report showed inflation reaching 2.9%. The increase for some suggested that the Federal Open Market Committee was even more likely to reduce interest rates in the September meeting.

What does it mean? Elliott Wave Theory analysis sees the 4th-wave downward correction that began on August 14. The correction is in its 2nd subwave, wave B.

It’s possible that wave B ended at the August 28 peak, 6523. But it’s uncertain, and until there is a greater downward movement, I’m keeping rising wave B as my principle analysis and falling wave C as my alternative analysis.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 3:30 p.m., 50-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)
• 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)
• 3{-8} (unnamed), 8/5/2025, 6313.25 (up)
• 4{-9} (unnamed), 8/14/2025, 6508.75 (down)
• B{-10} (unnamed), 8/20/2025, 6162.75 (down)

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 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 work at www.timbovee.com