Panic stations for this share

Sometimes, when watching a share, it can be similar to watching the Scottish football team in action. Our last "big picture" article on Johnston Press was issued with the price trading in the 130s and warned of relaxation coming to 16p.

Below such a level and we would be struggling, due to a plethora of minus signs prefacing targets! As with the Scottish national football team, there proved no point in watching what happened. The price collapsed, as we'd forecast...

And, again similar to the Scottish team, the situation now stinks.

It hit our 16p on 4 July 2016 and, the next day, the market gapped (manipulated) the price lower. It was clear the smart money didn't value JPR at 16p, as it was eventually to halve again to 7.8p.

Since such a point, the bounce has been pretty lacklustre. Currently, the situation with the share is that it needs to better 26.5p before we can risk taking any rise seriously. It's trading at 14p or so and, from a near-term perspective, anything now below 7.8p suggests 6.5p initially with secondary, if broken, at 1p.

Please remember, we're calculating this only on market data since May 2014 as everything before such a point (the bit where the price utterly collapsed) computes with a minus sign. This is obviously a far from comfortable situation.

The ruling "big picture" downtrend is currently around 185.577p, declining by 1.346p per day. Timeframe logic (our favourite joke) suggests that, should the share price continue to flutter around below 20p, it will be ready to challenge the downtrend in 127 days.

Which, like the share price, is a pretty rubbish logic.

Instead, should the share somehow manage to better 26.5p, growth to an initial 35p would make sense. In the event such a point is bettered, we can present 52p as a reasonable secondary.

The surprising thing about the secondary is that it implies a challenge of the downtrend since the market trashed the share price in 2014; the market has just 30 days to enact such a challenge, as any delay beyond the start of December will suggest the price moving to a region where optimism is permitted.

In summary, despite it being a newspaper share and capable of inventing a miracle out of thin air, we're nervous and the suggestion for the near future is to panic below 11.5p.

This article is for information and discussion purposes only and does not form a recommendation to invest or otherwise. The value of an investment may fall. The investments referred to in this article may not be suitable for all investors, and if in doubt, an investor should seek advice from a qualified investment adviser.

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.