BABCOCK INTL PLC (LSE:BAB) This share has a chart which immediately made me think of a nephew. This teenage experiences (I refuse to say suffers) Aspergers and is astonishingly bright, if often rather focussed on the wrong things. His current area of specialist interest is camera's, proving capable of dismantling them, fixing them, improving them and generally talking far too much about them. We recently visited for dinner and, as usual, he was absent "doing stuff" in his room. Suddenly, he appeared holding a Pentax and an Olympus camera, placing both on the table and exclaiming excitedly about the stupid shutter mechanics on one as compared to the exotic method on the other. My sister gave me her best "just pretend to be fascinated" look with the lad eventually vanishing once he'd exacted a promise I'd come through after dinner.
Why is this like Babcock?
I called up their chart, immediately running through to the lounge to tell me wife about it. The moment I started talking, I remembered my nephew - and my sisters frequent comments that he's very like me!
In the hope someone reading this is interested, look at that solid RED line from 2011 through to 2015. It's almost like someone decided to move the share price from 560p up to 1760p in increments of 1p per calendar day. This, regardless of trading news, market forces, share availability, or laws relating to supply and demand. It almost begs another teenager anecdote, the one where adults hate lies but REALLY hate "stupid lies" which imply we are idiots. To my eye, this price growth from 2011 to 2014 falls into the category of "stupid lie". By April 2014, it looks as if it were decided this cannot go on any longer and the share price gapped manipulated downward (gapped) to create a brand new trend. It results in the situation where movement now above 1072 looks capable of 1259p next with secondary a very probable long term 1388p.
The company have a long term uptrend since 2009, shown with a dashing RED line. It implies the share price needs now fall below 800p to provoke alarm, along with a trip to 555p initially, maybe even 381p if the company opt to issue negative news.
But for now, it looks very like 1388 shall prove possible in the fullness of time and guess what, it covers the manipulation gap from 1376p, a truly random coincidence I feel...