Which way next for Barclays shares?
Independent analyst Alistair Strang refreshes his chart outlook for this high street lender that's traded sideways for the past couple of months.
31st March 2025 07:42
by Alistair Strang from Trends and Targets
Our outlook against Barclays (LSE:BARC) from three weeks ago gave some quite bombastic predictions, none of which actually happened!
Instead of triggering our gain scenario by moving above 313p, the best the share managed was a visit to 311.6p. On the alternate side of life, on 13 March the share price dipped briefly below our drop trigger of 287p, accomplishing this feat with a plunge in the opening second of trade.
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This, unfortunately, is one of our favourite hobby horses, one which states to never trust a dip down (or spike up) at the open of trade. Often, we feel these movements are engineered to create “mood lighting” for traders, creating an expectation which will inevitably force the wrong conclusions by the gullible. This is why our preference is for closing prices to be treated more seriously, regardless of the subject being a share, index, or commodity.
If we stick to our guns and rely on closing prices, we’re now forced to take the stance of anticipating further movement below 293p to now trigger reversal to an initial 279p with our secondary, if broken, a less likely 272p.
Overall, this isn’t great, placing the share price in a zone where an eventual “bottom” of 256p becomes possible. But we’d also advocate paying close attention to where the share price actually closes in relation to our target levels.
Visually and historically, there’s a pretty good chance of a bounce should the 279p level next make an appearance. But as for rushing in and taking a long position at such a level, there’s also the grave danger of the often-tested uptrend since February of 2024 breaking, it being a fairly medium-term uptrend and emphatically not a set of rules.
If sufficient number of traders lose reliance on this Red line, things could go wrong rather quickly and make our gloomy 256p the subject of reality.
With our expectation being for Barclays to bounce from the 279p level, it shall prove interesting if any rebound exceeds the 310p level as this should provoke gains to an initial 322p with our secondary, if bettered, at 335p. Overall, we’d regard this as kicking off a cycle toward 407p as a major point of interest sometime in the future
Source: Trends and Targets. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Alistair Strang has led high-profile and "top secret" software projects since the late 1970s and won the original John Logie Baird Award for inventors and innovators. After the financial crash, he wanted to know "how it worked" with a view to mimicking existing trading formulas and predicting what was coming next. His results speak for themselves as he continually refines the methodology.
Alistair Strang is a freelance contributor and not a direct employee of Interactive Investor. All correspondence is with Alistair Strang, who for these purposes is deemed a third-party supplier. Buying, selling and investing in shares is not without risk. Market and company movement will affect your performance and you may get back less than you invest. Neither Alistair Strang or Interactive Investor will be responsible for any losses that may be incurred as a result of following a trading idea.
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