As 2015 came to an end, I found myself increasingly whining about what I called the ‘gaga manoeuvre’.
It's circled on the chart for Tesco (LON:TSCO) chart below. Gaga stands for gap-down, gap-up.
In that order it signalled a period of growth for the grocer. We saw gap-up, gap-down for Lloyds (LON:LLOY), which foreshadowed its current plunge.
This sort of thing tends fascinate me as, while monitoring 80+ shares on a daily basis, when the market tries a new ploy and we start seeing it used fairly frequently, it allows us to give clients the heads up.
I don't ever regard the playing field as level, preferring to believe instead that, yes, they are out to get us.
Obviously, it's silly to personalise these sort of things. But there's a heck of a lot more to the job than simply drawing trend lines when figuring out what's going on.
Against Tesco, the gaga move implied the share intends head to 199p, maybe even 209p. But I've slight doubts whether this will prove possible against the current backdrop of a truly foul market.
Additionally there is the matter of the downtrend since 2013, which I rather suspect will intrude ob any immediate rise.
This line is currently at 192p and despite Tesco breezing through its downtrend since March last year, this light blue line is almost certain to cause an issue.
To be honest, I've been pretty amazed at Tesco's performance this year as it makes many other members of the market look a bit like last week’s lettuce.
Perhaps I'm being too cynical as I should admit, in normal conditions, I'd be 99% convinced Tesco wants to visit 209p and relative safety for the future.
One thing worth remembering is a facet of price behaviour noted during the last six months.
Essentially, if a share breaks trend and starts going up, worrying about manipulation gaps before the trend break is needless effort.
I'm not witnessing many reversals to cover these gaps. But importantly this is only true where a share has not been gapped up over a trend line.
When this happens, if it's gapped down a few days later, it generally will face a hammering.
Finally, Tesco does allow one bit of good news. I'd been grumbling at the share threatening to visit 115p, maybe even 78p.
Now the share has started trading above that dark blue line, these numbers are no longer valid or viable.
Closure above my 192p level has another implication as I shall be able to mention a distant 248p as becoming viable.
Alistair Strang is the founder of www.trendsandtargets.com