Technicals | Jun 05 2012
By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck
Just to recap: technical analysts at Barclays adopted a long term negative view on base metals in May. In recent analyses, they believe crude oil prices have now joined base metals with lower prices to be expected, despite last night's bounce upwards. The analysts also have a more positive view on gold, despite last night's decline and a rather mixed performance for gold since last year.
Adding more fuel to the team's Greater Bearish View, is their latest analysis for what's happening on price charts for aluminium. Barclays chartists warn investors aluminum appears to be forming a multi-year head-and-shoulders pattern, which would be a major negative given the more time it takes to complete such technical patterns, the more powerful the signal in itself is considered to be. This means that a pattern that has taken around four years to complete should be a very powerful indicator indeed.
The good news is the pattern hasn't completed just yet as it requires a weekly close below US$1896/t and with London markets closed on the first two days this week, it is well possible that enough confidence has returned to financial markets to prevent this from happening before Friday this week. But what about the weeks ahead?
The Barclays analysts remain unperturbed: their targets for the metal remain at US$1835 and US$1786 which is conform the team's Greater Bearish View. In case anyone wondered: the team's view is that copper will be targeting trendline support at US$6914/t.
Technical limitations
If you are reading this story through a third party distribution channel and you cannot see charts included, we apologise, but technical limitations are to blame.
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