9:35 a.m. New York time

What’s happening now? The S&P 500 E-mini futures rose overnight, reaching a high of 7469.75, and then fell sharply to the 7410s.

What does it mean? Elliott Wave Theory focuses on the fact that wave D{-5} reached a high of 7540 on May 14, but price has not yet verified whether that peak ended the wave. If it did, then wave E{-5} has begun its decline and is likely to reach the 6280s or lower.

Each wave is a subwave of wave 4{-4}, a declining corrective wave that began last year in October. Wave 4 has taken the form of an Expanding Triangle, and my estimate of how low wave E might go is based on the location of the triangle’s lower boundary, determined by connecting prior lows into a boundary of sorts.

Sometimes price moves beyond the boundary. For example, wave D{-5} has moved above the upper boundary and remains so.

So the bottom line is, today as in days before, wave D{-5} may still be underway, or wave E{-5} may have begun. And until it is verified that wave E has begun, the chart will label the current decline as a correction within rising wave D{-5}.

Decision Points. A rise above 7469.75, today’s overnight high, would weaken the argument that wave E{-5} has begun and would return attention to the May 14 peak, 7540. A move above 7540 would mean wave D{-5} is still underway.

A decline below the 7407.50 area would erase the most recent short-term rise and strengthen the argument that the May 14 high was the end of wave D{-5}. A decline below the recent lows in the 7350s would strengthen that argument further.

Stronger verification of wave E{-5} would require more than a short-term selloff. A sustained decline back toward the upper boundary of the Expanding Triangle, now in the low 7100s, would make the wave E{-5} interpretation much harder to dismiss. Until then, the chart remains ambiguous: wave D{-5} may have ended, but it has not yet been proven to have ended.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures 9:35 a.m., 330 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 E-mini futures
• 5{-3} Minuette 8/1/2025, 6239.50 (up}
• 4{-4} Subminutte 10/29/2025, 6953.75 (down}
• D{-5} Micro, 3/30/2026, 6353.25 (up}
• C{-6} Submicro, 4/2/2026, 6503.75 (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, May 21, 2026

Disclaimer

Tim Bovee, Private Trader tracks the analysis and trades of a private trader managing his own accounts. The content reflects my interpretation of market structure, including Elliott Wave Theory and related tools.

Nothing in this blog constitutes a recommendation to buy or sell stocks, options, or any other financial instrument, or to pursue any particular strategy. The purpose of this blog is education and entertainment.

No trader is ever 100 percent successful. Trading in stock and options markets involves risk and uncertainty. Each trader must make decisions for his or her own account and accept full responsibility for the outcomes.

Charts and tools are used to support my personal analysis. Any data displayed is illustrative of that analytical process and is not presented as a source of market data for redistribution.

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