FTSE for Friday: will FTSE 100 catch Wall Street's cold?
Having only recently made an all-time high, the S&P 500 is now in negative territory for 2025. Will the FTSE 100 follow American stocks lower? Independent analyst Alistair Strang has run his software again to find out.
28th February 2025 07:33
by Alistair Strang from Trends and Targets
Sometimes, glaring at markets in an attempt to elicit potential movements just doesn’t work. Currently, the FTSE 100 is in such a humourless situation, our software tending to prefer giving “safe” predictions which, frankly, are useless. When this sort of thing starts to occur, we zoom out and look at the big picture, trying to figure out if the index is suffering from some sort of historical effect.
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It turns out this is probably the case as, when we look back in time to 2020, a situation was created which suggested the potential of some market stutters around the 8,765 level. This, very oddly, appears to be happening, though it is hard to comprehend why the absurd market drop literally five years ago should be contributing to our current confusion.
With shares, it is understandable as folk who invested while trying to pick bottom, generally are delighted to get their money back, once an investment finally turns to real profit. From a Big Picture perspective, we count this as a halfway point and, for the FTSE 100, this works out roughly halfway to an overall target of 10,156 points.
Visually, it appears we may be correct, the recovery from a market low of 4,900 creating such a punctuation mark in the FTSE at 8,765, and there’s no doubt the index is currently bouncing a bit above and a bit below the target level.
If we’re right and adhere strictly to our software rules, it’s apparently the case where above 8,765 should now power market movement to 8,849 next with our secondary, if bettered, at 8,928 points. These numbers are quite serious, though bare no immediate resemblance to the state of market futures, while writing this.
The FTSE closed Thursday at 8,756 points, pleasantly close to our trigger level, but currently (4am Friday) market futures are sitting at just 8,697 points. Something, perhaps the UK prime minister's visit to the White House, is causing quite severe FTSE Future reversals.
Regardless, FTSE 100 Futures have lost 60 points overnight which does not bode well for Friday.
Presently, it feels like FTSE movement below 8,680 should now trigger reversals to an initial 8,579 with our secondary, if broken, a less likely 8,336 points.
Have a good weekend.
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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