9:35 a.m. New York time

What’s happening now. The S&P 500 E-mini futures continued sideways overnight with a shallow downward drift. The market showed no meaningful response to the PCE inflation report with February data, reinforcing that current price action is being driven by forward expectations rather than backward-looking data.

What does it mean? Elliott Wave Theory’s principal analysis holds that rising wave B{-6} continues. The alternative analysis treats yesterday’s high at 6847.25 as the end of wave B{-6} and the beginning of declining wave C{-6}.

Neither view has been confirmed. For now, I am retaining the B{-6}-continues analysis unless and until the chart provides clear evidence that wave C{-6} is underway.

Rising wave B{-6} is a subwave within declining wave C{-5}, which in turn is a subwave within corrective wave 4{-4}. That larger correction, which began on October 29, 2025, appears to be taking the form of an expanding triangle. The 4-hour futures chart below shows wave 4{-4} in its entirety from that starting point.

Decision Points. A move above 6847.25 keeps rising wave B{-6} intact and suggests further upside within the corrective structure. A sustained move below the recent support zone near 6780 strengthens the case that wave C{-6} is underway. Until one of these levels is clearly broken, the analysis remains in a zone of ambiguity.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures at 9:35 a.m., 4-hour 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 E-mini futures
• 5{-3} Minuette 8/1/2025, 6239.50 (up}
• 4{-4} Subminutte 10/29/2025, 6953.75 (down}
• C{-5} Micro, 1/27/2026, 7043 (down}
• B{-6} (none), 3/30/2026, 6353.25 (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, April 9, 2026

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