9:35 a.m. New York time
What’s happening now? The S&P 500 E-mini futures rose gently overnight until the Employment Situation Report was released an hour before the opening bell. The futures began to rise minutes before the release, and then rose swiftly from 7765.75 to a high of 7802.75. From that point they gave back some of the gain.
The report said nonfarm payroll employment rose by 29,000 in September, far less than August’s revised increase of 133,000. The unemployment rate edged up to 4.2%. Emplooyment Situatiion 200261002
What does it mean? The jobs report produced a substantial price gain while our Elliott Wave Theory analysis is trying to distinguish between wave D{-5} still rising and wave E{-5} already falling. A strong enough rise could materially strengthen the D{-5} interpretation; a post-report spike that subsequently fails could instead provide useful evidence for the E{-5} case.
However, compared with the scale of the decline from the September 22 high of 7848.50, the ground covered by traders’ response to the jobs report remains relatively small. The futures have not challenged that high. In judging the chart, I see a bit of drama, but no resolution of the ambiguity as yet.
Decision Points. A sustained rise toward and above 7848.50 would increasingly favor the view that wave D{-5} remains underway. A failure of the jobs-report rally followed by a renewed decline would strengthen the alternative that D{-5} ended September 22 and wave E{-5} has begun. Until price provides one of those signals, the Elliott Wave analysis remains ambiguous.
[S&P 500 E-mini futures 9:35 a.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)
- D{-5} Micro, 3/30/2026, 7353.25 (up)
- C{-6} Submicro, 7/29/2026, 7324 (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 pageAnalytical Methods for a rundown on where to go for information on Elliott Wave analysis.
By Tim Bovee, Portland, Oregon, October 2, 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
