12:30 p.m. New York time

What happened to this morning’s analysis? When I booted up my MacBook Air this morning, ready to analyze the S&P 500 futures, a Google installation brought the Gemini AI into contact with my email. Things went downhill from there. Many programs and services no longer worked properly, including WordPress, the platform I use to post my analyses. It took a while, but I fixed it. Here’s this morning’s analysis, several hours late.

What’s happening now? The S&P 500 E-mini futures rose overnight, from 7617.50 to 7722.25, then pulled back into the 7680s before bouncing to slightly above 7700.

What does it mean? Elliott Wave Theory sees no change in the analysis. Falling wave E{-5} and its subwave, falling wave A{-6}, continue. Wave E{-5} is the final subwave of wave 4{-4}, a downward correction that took the form of an expanding triangle and began on October 29, 2025.

Decision Points. The overnight rise has not changed the larger Elliott Wave count. The immediate markers are the overnight high of 7722.25 and low of 7617.50. A sustained move above the high would strengthen the case for a larger countertrend rise within A{-6}; a break below the low would strengthen the case that the decline is resuming.

[S&P 500 E-mini futures 12:30 p.m., 1-day 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} Subminuette 10/29/2025, 6953.75 (down)
• E{-5} Micro, 8/13/2026, 7838.50 (down)
• A{-6} Submicro, 8/13/2026, 7838.50 (down)

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 pageAnalytical Methods for a rundown on where to go for information on Elliott Wave analysis.

By Tim Bovee, Portland, Oregon, September 17, 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 byTimothy K. Boveeis licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

License

Based on work atwww.timbovee.com