Rolls-Royce: the odds of another rising cycle
A big recovery from its wartime low is encouraging for the aerospace engines giant, but what next? Here's what independent analyst Alistair Strang's charts reveal.
9th April 2026 07:56
by Alistair Strang from Trends and Targets
The area in which share prices makes sense varies. If you imagine a room with two doors, some days you can enter that room and find the other door is pretty far away. Other days you could enter that room and find the other door is just a step away. The two doors represent the opportunity for rises or the opportunity for reversals, and the room contains a bunch of folk wandering around trying to figure out which door to go through.
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Presently, the uncertain situation in the Middle East has (from our perspective) created a very big room with little certainty as to the true market direction. Yesterday, the FTSE 100 experienced a 3%+ day of trading and some components of the index enjoyed what sounded like substantial gains. Unfortunately, from our jaundiced stance, despite the likes of Rolls-Royce experiencing a near 12% rise, our logic demands we regard the share price as simply messing around, rather than broadcasting any real signs. (Spoiler Alert: we think Rolls-Royce Holdings (LSE:RR.) now intends another rising cycle.)
It’s a dangerous situation, with long and short positions alike.
One of our Big Deal indicators relates to what occurs after a share price exceeds the level of a trend break. In the case of Rolls, they broke the red trend at 1,232p and were obviously doomed thereafter. However, the share price “only” fell to 1,079p and has since recovered a bit. More importantly, the market opted to gap the price up, once again into the realms of the red uptrend and giving substantial hope.
Our conventional arithmetic now suggests above 1,283p should target near-term share price growth to an initial 1,344p with our secondary, if bettered, at 1,431p. This secondary is all important, giving the share price the opportunity to close above the previous all-time high of 1,420p back in February and thus create a further rising cycle.
But the visuals indicate we should expect some sort of hesitation at our 1,431p ambition, doubtless due to the perceived appearance of a glass ceiling on charts, a supposition which will ignore a surprising longer-term influence at 1,650p and a pretty nice headline.
Should things intend to go wrong for Rolls, below 1,198p risks triggering reversals down to an initial 1,099p with our secondary, if broken, at 992p.
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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