3:30 a.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. After pushing above the upper boundary of the expanding triangle earlier today, the S&P 500 futures reversed hard and drove down to the triangle’s lower boundary (roughly the 6830s). From there it bounced, attempting to retrace back toward the interior of the pattern.

Elliott Wave Theory: The downward corrective triangle continues, labeled, in red on the chart, as wave 4{-10} within wave A{-9} within the larger wave 2{-8}. Wave 2{-8} is the larger wave in the current sequence: an upward correction that began on November 21.

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. S&P 500 E-mini futures rose to a new high on Thursday, reaching 6928.75, and the dropping into the 6890s and 6980s.

What does it mean? Elliott Wave Theory analysis shows the movement to be consistent with an expanding corrective triangle, whose components are marked on the chart in red.

The triangle is a subwave — wave 4{-10} — within wave A{-9}, itself the first subwave within a larger triangle, wave 2{-8}, an upward correction. Wave 2 invalidated the more common Elliott Wave Theory patterns by moving beyond the start of wave 1, and therefore had to be one of the less common types.

I’m confident in my considering wave 2{-8} as being a triangle, less so in the case of wave 4{-10}.

Wave 2{-8} ruled out the more common corrective templates because price action pushed beyond a boundary that those patterns normally respect—specifically, it moved beyond the start of wave 1{-8}. That behavior forced a relabel to a less common corrective structure. In my count, the best fit is a triangle variant (an expanding triangle), which also explains the repeated head-fakes: higher highs followed by sharp pullbacks, followed by still higher highs.

Internally, wave A has been through a series of higher highs followed by declines that were followed by still higher highs. The expanding triangle pattern is an explanation for what other wise would be a series of head fakes.

What comes next? As a triangle, wave 2{-8} will have five subwaves, rather than the three subwaves more common in corrections. It is still in its first subwave, wave A{-9}, which along with its parent wave began on November 21.

Long story short, wave 2 will be with us for awhile as it complets wave A and works through wave B through E, each wave covering more ground than the one before.

When wave 2 is finally complete, wave 3{-8} will follow, a downtrending that most likely will fall below, perhaps by a significant distance, the end point of downtrending wave 1{-8}, at 6525 on November 21.

[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.

Most of the waves began not long ago, on October 8, 2025. See my essay posted on October 12, 2025, “The End of the Rise from 1932? Elliott Wave Theory Says ‘Yes’”, for a discussion of how that happened.

The difficult problem of estimating when a wave change should be accept as real rather than a headfake is addressed by the essay titled, “Is This Reversal Real?: How to Tell Without Being Whipsawed”.

• 1{+4} Supermillennium, (unknown start date or start price) {down}
  • A hypothetical wave one degree higher than Supercyle, needed to make the wave analysis complete.
• S&P 500 Index:
  • 1{+3} Supercycle, 10/8/2025, 6812.25 (down}
  • 1{+2} Cycle, 10/8/2025, 6812.25 (down}
  • 1{+1} Primary, 10/8/2025, 6812.25 (down}
  • 1{0} Intermediate, 10/8/2025, 6812.25 (down}
  • 1{-1} Minor, 10/8/2025, 6812.25 (down}
  • 1{-2} Minute, 10/8/2025, 6812.25 (down}
• S&P 500 Futures
  • 1{-3} Minuette 10/8/2025, 6812.25 (down}
  • 1{-4} Subminutte 10/8/2025, 6812.25 (down}
  • 1{-5} Micro, 10/8/2025, 6812.25 (down}
  • 5{-6} Submicro, 10/29/2025, 6953.75 (down)
  • 5{-7} Minuscule, 11/20/2025, 6791.25 (down)
  • 2{-8} (none), 11/21/2025, 6525 (up)
  • A{-9} (none), 11/21/2025, 6525 (up)
  • 3{-10} (none), 12/5/2025, 6905 (down–expanding triangle)

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, December 12, 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