Take-off time at Rolls-Royce?

Rolls-Royce (LSE:RR.)

The devastating news of BBC staff salaries will surely hurt Rolls-Royce sales. Thankfully, their automobile division is now split from the main company.

The funny thing, Rolls-Royce - currently trading around 925p - need only better 950p to assure us the share price has once again entered a growth cycle toward 1,160p as the "top" on the immediate price cycle.

If forced to select a point for entry on the final leg to the top, it appears closure above 1,000p will provide a pretty reliable signal.

If looking for a sign of movement strength, it appears anything near term bettering 928p should confirm the recent bounce from 900p was indeed a bottom and continued moves toward 944p can be expected near term, certainly within grasping distance of our 950p trigger level.

It's certainly not rocket science to identify the problem making itself known at 950p as, despite a soaring FTSE 100, Rolls-Royce has firmly refused to become airborne thus far.

But to be fair, the FTSE has celebrated the onset of the holiday season by messing around aimlessly while pretending to wear a respectable face.

But for Rolls-Royce to suffer any meaningful reversal, the share price requires to descend below the red line on the chart, currently 701p. In fact, even the immediate uptrend remains looking fairly robust with the share needing below 900p to suggest the upward emphasis has eased.

A calamity such as this permits weakness toward 889p initially with secondary at 867p. Neither result is visually threatening and numerically we require the share to trade below 835p before starting to suspect troubled skies are ahead.

For now, we're fairly relaxed with this and about the only sane problem appears at 1,100p, a level the share price struggled with previously and one which almost certainly will provide a stutter in any future rise as the suckers who bought in 2014 eagerly cash in at zero profit.

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, Shareprice, 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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