3:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. The S&P 500 futures largely spent the session moving lower, with periodic upward reversals that didn’t last.

Elliott Wave Theory: Wave 4(-7}, a rising upward correction, continues on its course. The final subwave within wave 4 will be a rising wave. How do we know when a rising wave mean the end of wave 4 and the start of wave 5{-7}? The expanding triangle pattern we’re seeing brings with it a lack of clarity. A drop below the previous low in the pattern, 6805 set on December 12, will suggest that a change may in fact be happening, but it’s not teverified. The price would need to not only move below that level but would stay below it. If it’s a true beginning of wave 5, it will show more clarity and energy than we’re seeing so far.

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. The S&P 500 E-mini futures rose from the 6870s to the 6890s when the Employment Situation Report for November was released, an hour before the opening bell. The price rapidly retraced down to the 6860s.

What does it mean? I have reworked the Elliott Wave Theory analysis analysis to fix some problems that had crept in going back several months. The main change for the present is that the corrective wave that began on November 21 is now labelled rising wave 4{-7}. The earlier analyses had labeled wave 5{-7} as still being underway.

Declining wave 5{-7}, which will begin at the moment wave 4{-7} ends, most likely will carry the price down to below 6525 — the starting point of wave 4{-7} — and possible a significant distance below that level.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 3:30 p.m., 90-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)
  • 4{-7} (none), 11/21/2025, 6525 (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, December 16, 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