3:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. The S&P 500 futures began to fall early in the session, from the 6750s down so far to 6701.75.

Elliott Wave Theory. Long story short: The lower price falls, the more likely it is that the 4th-wave upward correction that began on September 9 ended at the September 22 high, 6756.75, and that downtrending wave 5 has begun. Conversely, if there’s a reversal and a price rise back into the 6740 and 6750s, or higher, the more likely it is that wave 4 is still underway and wave 5 lies in the future.

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. The S&P 500 E-mini futures traded sideways overnight in the 6740s and 6750s.

What does it mean?  They 6750s are the lower range of a key resistance zone, according to Elliott Wave Theory. The zone remains below the September 22 high, 6756.75, suggesting that the 6750s are a barrier, a point where the trader consensus says “this high and no higher”, at least while current conditions continue. If the conditions change, then so does the consensus.

Since September 2 the futures have been working its way through a 4th-wave upward correction. That correction is in its final subwave, wave C. The end of wave C, most lkely, will also be the end of the correction, unless it turns out to take a complex form, with two or three corrective patterns of three subwaves each.

The initial, and almost always the only, three-wave corrective pattern’s wave C is in its final subwave, wave 5. So we’re close to learning whether the trade consensus will serve up a simple correction or a complex correction.

The wave 4 correction will be followed by a wave 5 downtrend, the type of wave that almost always moves beyond the start of the preceding 4th wave — 6371.75.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 9:35 a..m., 70-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)
• C{-10} (unnamed), 8/28/2025, 6523 (down)
• 4{-11} (unnamed), 9/2/2025, 6371.75 (up)
• C{-12} (unnamed), 9/5/2025, 6452 (up)
• 5{-13} (unnamed), 9/17/2025, 6611 (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, September 23, 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