Interactive Investor

Can Centrica’s shares warm up this winter?

The British Gas owner has a lethargic share price – but could pick up if it does this.

12th January 2021 08:35

Alistair Strang from Trends and Targets

The British Gas owner has a lethargic share price – but could pick up if it does this.

Centrica

A Google search for Centrica (LSE:CNA) discovered they define themselves as an electrical services company, a neat trick for the folk behind British Gas.

It's funny, one would suspect a company specialising in energy would experience a flourish to their share price during the cold months of winter. In the case of Centrica, this is rarely the case. We needed to travel back five years before the share price experienced a cheerful first quarter. Maybe they are due a break in 2021.

But, so far, things tend to reflect the lethargic motion of the FTSE rather than cold, long, nights requiring lots of electricity and gas for heating and lots of income for this multinational. Perhaps this year shall be different!

Presently trading around the 50p mark, the share needs to move above 54p to convince me of happy days ahead. In such a scenario we're looking for recovery to an initial 58.5p with secondary, if exceeded, calculating at a longer term 73p. In the event of this triggering, visually the tightest stop looks like 40p.

The implications, should the 40p level break, are of coming weakness to an initial 31p, rather effectively matching the Covid-19 drop from last year. Should 31p break, our final hope for a bounce resides at an ultimate bottom of 18p.

By most standards, Centrica’s share price dwells in a dangerous place currently but visually requires little work to extract itself.

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. 

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