Barclays and the path to new highs
With shares in the high street banks trading just off multi-year highs, independent analyst Alistair Strang looks at potential to break new ground.
23rd February 2026 07:54
by Alistair Strang from Trends and Targets
It’s funny to think it was ‘only’ 19 years ago, when a bunch of analysts were confidently suggesting that Barclays (LSE:BARC) would rise from just above three quid to the eight quid level and on toward £10. This was 2007, the share price within weeks of discovering gravity and commencing an unbelievable and cruel cycle which was to explore what would happen if the price was to eventually hit 60p.
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Those days were truly horrendous to live through, the financial crash through to 2009 producing numbers we simply couldn’t conceive. Our software, back in the early days of trying to produce realistic targets, highlighted a potential 94p as an ultimate drop target, a price level below which we couldn’t produce any numbers without introducing minus signs.
Barclays were far from alone in this diabolical mess, but one thing we’ve noticed in the years since is that if a share price breaks our “ultimate” drop target, it has a quite dreadful job in trying to recover until something major occurs. We note, with considerable scepticism that the current hype around AI essentially attempts to introduce a similar positive impossible concept.
We mention the foregoing just as a reminder that things can go horribly wrong, though there are currently no signals that trouble any of the retail banking sector. It is still the case that Barclays' share price needs to close a session below 389p to throw our optimism for the future into the bonfire of flammable dreams.
It is currently the case that weakness below 459p threatens to trigger reversal to an initial 437p with our secondary, if broken, at 393p and a very hopeful bounce. We’re painfully aware such a ridiculous secondary target is dangerously close to our danger level of 389p.
However, from a current perspective, we suspect movement above 487p should be useful, ideally triggering a cycle of further gains to an initial 529p with our secondary, if bettered, at 558p, a price level at which we now anticipate some hesitation. While the Big Picture places the share on a theoretical cycle to 704p, we shall be quite nervous if it ever makes it above 558p.
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.
Alistair Strang is a freelance contributor and not a direct employee of Interactive Investor. All correspondence is with Alistair Strang, who for these purposes is deemed a third-party supplier. Buying, selling and investing in shares is not without risk. Market and company movement will affect your performance and you may get back less than you invest. Neither Alistair Strang or Interactive Investor will be responsible for any losses that may be incurred as a result of following a trading idea.
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