Lloyds Bank shares: two trend lines to follow

Sometimes things can be better than they seem and, hopefully, our scribbles about Lloyds prove this shall be the case.

• Invest with ii:Open a Stocks & Shares ISA | Top ISA Funds | Transfer your ISA to ii

We’ve currently applied two main trends to Lloyds and, of course, it’s becoming difficult to ascertain which one shall prove “real”. The confusion around Lloyds' share price movements in relation to both the blue and red lines tends to confirm the market is also paying attention to history.

Source: Trends and Targets. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. Important: Trends and Targets charts only incorporate official share count consolidations, ignoring rights issues where investors have a choice as to whether to participate.

Let's deal with red first. The share broke red at the start of October, recovered a bit then broke downward a week later. But this second break lower included a gap down, then a gap up. This is something we’d generally take as priming for a bounce and, in the case of Lloyds, the share price indeed bounced and conformed rather exactly with our “GaGa” calculations. 

In plain English, it went up by the correct amount when we judge the tiny little manipulation gaps (circled), the 4p bounce insignificant but proving the market was playing by the rules. We already felt this would be the case, the reversal to 100p on 8 October neatly in line with our previous prediction in September. It certainly appears red may be the important trend for us to watch.

However, there’s also the inconvenient blue downtrend, an 18-year-old piece of stupidity which should be ignored. But again, unfortunately the market also seems to be paying attention to this trend, the share price closing at 105.85p last week and returning itself above the silly long-term downtrend. We do concede it’s not often when the market is gifted two trend lines crossing, along with a perfect situation in which to muddy the waters. Our inclination is two take blue slightly more seriously than red.

In the event our blue scenario intends to pan out, above 107p should now trigger a rise to an initial 112p with our longer-term secondary, if bettered, calculating at 119p. These ambitions should prove pretty important, actually justifying the word “breakout” in the event Lloyds manages to close above the previous closing price high of 117p. The Big Picture allocates a future attraction coming from 152p in such a game plan.

Of course, red may hold all the losing numbers, especially as our 100p drop target was exceeded by 0.3p for a couple of seconds. This bothers us slightly as now, below 100p threatens to promote reversal down to an initial 95.5p with our secondary, if broken, a potential trampoline level at 91.3p

Interesting times.

Source: Trends and Targets. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. Important: Trends and Targets charts only incorporate official share count consolidations, ignoring rights issues where investors have a choice as to whether to participate.