eyeQ: Sainsbury’s slump triggers trading signal
Experts at eyeQ have used AI and their own smart machine to analyse macro conditions and generate actionable trading signals. Here’s what it says about the grocer’s shares.
3rd December 2025 11:22
by Huw Roberts from eyeQ
People outside a Sainsbury’s in Whitechapel, London. Photo: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images.
“Our signals are crafted through macro-valuation, trend analysis, and meticulous back-testing. This combination ensures a comprehensive evaluation of an asset's value, market conditions, and historical performance.” eyeQ
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Sainsbury
Macro Relevance: 79%
Model Value: 358.59p
Fair Value Gap: -14.78% discount to model value
Data correct as at 3 December 2025. Please click glossary for explanation of terms. Long-term strategic model.
Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund first invested in UK supermarket chain Sainsbury (J) (LSE:SBRY)’s in 2007. It owned around 10.5% of the grocer and had been the largest shareholder. Until now.
News has emerged that the fund has recently sold around 83 million of its 240 million shares. Unsurprisingly, the news prompted a huge fall in the share, which briefly fell below 300p. In fact, the gunshot 8% sell-off represents the biggest one-day sell-off since March 2020 and Covid lockdowns.
Clearly, this is not good news and will have investors on edge. What does Qatar know that we don’t?
eyeQ has two perspectives.
Investors buy stocks for one reason - they think the share price is going higher. However, when they sell, it can be for a myriad of reasons - they feel the time is right to take profits, they need cash, they have other needs for the money, they’re worried about markets more broadly rather than the individual stock, and they want to rotate into a different sector or theme. The point being, the selling isn’t necessarily a big negative statement on the company itself.
The last few reasons above are more macro-related than company specific, which begs the question what does eyeQ’s model say about the macro picture?
A macro relevance score of 79% means the big picture is important. And macro remains a tailwind; eyeQ model value has risen 11% in the last month thanks to a mix of healthy risk appetite, OK growth and a weaker pound. So, this sell-off hasn’t been justified by macro fundamentals and the stock now sits nearly 15% cheap on our metrics.
The divergence is big enough to trigger a bullish signal. We acknowledge that, in the short term, that won’t be enough to allay concerns about the biggest shareholder selling such a large stake.
However, it should offer some solace to those investors who are playing a long-term game. For now, the macro backdrop remains friendly and this move means a lot of bad news is now in the share price.
Source: eyeQ. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Useful terminology:
Model value
Where our smart machine calculates that any stock market index, single stock or exchange-traded fund (ETF) should be priced (the fair value) given the overall macroeconomic environment.
Model (macro) relevance
How confident we are in the model value. The higher the number the better! Above 65% means the macro environment is critical, so any valuation signals carry strong weight. Below 65%, we deem that something other than macro is driving the price.
Fair Value Gap (FVG)
The difference between our model value (fair value) and where the price currently is. A positive Fair Value Gap means the security is above the model value, which we refer to as “rich”. A negative FVG means that it's cheap. The bigger the FVG, the bigger the dislocation and therefore a better entry level for trades.
Long Term model
This model looks at share prices over the last 12 months, captures the company’s relationship with growth, inflation, currency shifts, central bank policy etc and calculates our key results - model value, model relevance, Fair Value Gap.
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