Rather annoyingly, I know I've written an article previously on Sports Direct (LON:SPD) as I've an archive showing that in 2014, I had projected a drop potential of 510p, maybe even 420p.
But hanged if I can find the article anywhere other than a brief headline column in December 2014 giving criteria for a rise to 712p, initially, with secondary 782p during 2015.
The strange thing is it reached the 712p level. But on the immediate trend, the further rise foundered at 765p, which was nowhere near close enough to my secondary.
And this perhaps hinted at weakness
What has happened to their share price is a bit messy. At time of writing, it has closed its Kamikaze Thursday at 593p and I've some hope for a slight bounce.
The low of the day was 567p and the immediate price cycle calculated with a bottom potential of 560p. So perhaps it was sufficiently close to provoke a dead cat bounce.
The reason I'm so blunt about it comes from the chart .
Sports Direct’s share price was gapped below red, a long term uptrend since 2012 and a clear indication the market wants this down. It results in the curious situation where, despite the share actually doing pretty well during 2015, I'm forced to acknowledge my software argument where it suggests the ruling influence is now coming from a long term 350p.
Given I'm proposing the price effectively halving from its 2015 performance, this is quite a scary proposition but it amazingly threatens a test during 2016 against the long term uptrend (the dashed red line) which dates from the lows of 2009.
Thankfully, none of this becomes viable unless the share price closes a session below 570p, so perhaps some hope is permitted.
However, it does need a miracle. But I'd only tend take any recovery seriously if the price managed above the red line, currently 665.9p. When I've seen shares do this, invariably the market is serious about correcting a drop but for now, I'm not too impressed and suspect my software original 'bounce' level of 510p will be the next point where some hesitation on the way down may be hoped.
Good luck with this one.
Alistair is founder of www.trendsandtargets.com