Holiday schedule. Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and the stock markets will wrap up early today, at 2 p.m. New York time. Markets will be closed on Thursday — New Year’s Day — and the session will return to its regular hours on Friday, January 2, 2026.

1:30 p.m. New York time

Half an hour before the closing bell. The S&P 500 E-mini futures reached a session low of 6913.75 and then rose modestly into the 6920s.

Elliott Wave Theory. Today produced a brief break below 6915, which is a point in favor of downtrending wave 5{-6} having begun. However, that break has not yet shown staying power. Price recovered back into the 6920s, and the session has so far remained a tug-of-war rather than a decisive breakdown.

Bottom line. I’ve retained the status quo for now: the upward correction, wave 4{-6}, remains the working count. That said, the market also rejected the morning spike high at 6951.5. As long as price remains below that level, the burden of proof stays on the bulls.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 1:30 p.m., 5-minute bars, with volume] 

9:35 a.m. New York time.

What’s happening now. The S&P 500 E-mini futures opened in the 6940s overnight, declined into the 6930s, and then rose sharply into the 6950s on the Initial Jobless Claims release an hour before the opening bell.

What does it mean? Elliott Wave Theory is much as it has been for days — stuck in a narrow range, with no clarity as to whether the upward correction, wave 4{-6}, is still underway, or whether wave 4{-6} ended on December 26 and downtrending wave 5{-6} began.

The prior peak was 6994. A rise back toward 6994 would favor the interpretation that wave 4{-6} is continuing. By contrast, continued weakness that remains below the 6978 area — and especially any decline that pushes lower from here — strengthens the argument that wave 5{-6} is underway.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 1:30 p.m., 60-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}
  • 4{-6} Submicro, 10/10/2025, 6540.25 (up)
  • C{-7} (none), 11/21/2025, 6525 (up)
  • C{-8} (none), 12/17/2025, 6771.50 (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, December 31, 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