Barclays shares: are things beginning to change?

Its share price has been dawdling, but now shows signs of life.

Barclays PLC

A sign that things might be changing a bit has been Barclays (LSE:BARC).

The resumption of its dividend is positive, but lacklustre at 1p a share.

But, despite its mention of losses in the last full year, the company's share price has risen a solid 10% since its results announcement a week ago. We've a couple of reasons to believe this rise shall prove important for the longer term.

Three weeks ago, when we reviewed Barclays, we'd given criteria for a price rise to 160.5p. This was achieved, even exceeded, and the share managed to close above the target level twice last week. For us, this ticks a box to justify longer-term optimism.

Secondly, the chart has a blue downtrend which dates back to 2007. Despite some dramatics this year, the share price has now cleared this downtrend, again giving some excuse for optimism.

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Next above 166p allows us to calculate the potential of continued growth to 181p with secondary, if exceeded, working out at a pretty solid-looking 190p. The secondary effectively matches the high of the share price before the price caught the Covid-19 bug almost exactly a year ago. Common sense alone suggests the risk of hesitation at such a level.

For it all to go horribly wrong, Barclays’ share price must now close a session below 140p. To be fair, closure even below 155p would now give early warning of some alarm.

Hopefully our optimism isn't misplaced!

Source: Trends and Targets. Past performance is not a guide to future performance

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.