Analysis: oil prices and Barclays shares
After another weekend of fighting in the Middle East, independent analyst Alistair Strang updates his charts for Brent crude and this high street bank.
16th March 2026 07:44
by Alistair Strang from Trends and Targets

Our world news feed, biased toward important events, has been punctuated on Sunday evening with irritating snippets about ‘The Oscars’. But with Brent Crude continuing to confuse, it probably deserves an Oscar for the tight price control currently being exerted.
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Apparently, above $102.70 a barrel should next trigger movement to an initial $108 with our secondary, if beaten, at $117.34. If triggered, the tightest stop loss looks fairly attractive at $100.
This sort of thing would produce a Double Top visually, implying an excellent price level where a share correction can make itself known, powering the price down to an initial $79 with secondary, when broken, at $67 and a lot of questions about “what was all that about?”.

Source: Trends and Targets. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Barclays (LSE:BARC) share price has been enjoying quite an interesting level of surprising movements. Firstly, it started March by being gapped down below the Red uptrend since April 2025. Additionally – and surprisingly – the share price appears to be making an effort to respect the Blue downtrend since 2007, currently at 379p. When this sort of thing occurs, it generally signals some strength in a share price, with surprise recovery often taking place.
If we dwell on our negative scenario, below 379p has the potential for trouble, giving an initial target of 353p with our secondary, if broken, at 280p and hopefully a bounce.
Our more positive scenario demands the share price exceed 402p as a lift to 414p looks possible with our longer-term secondary, if bettered, calculating at 430p and the need for us to take a long hard look at the future for their share value. We suspect Barclays share price is about to enact a surprise recovery.

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.
Alistair Strang has led high-profile and "top secret" software projects since the late 1970s and won the original John Logie Baird Award for inventors and innovators. After the financial crash, he wanted to know "how it worked" with a view to mimicking existing trading formulas and predicting what was coming next. His results speak for themselves as he continually refines the methodology.
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