Why Card Factory needs a miracle

Our location on Scotland's west coast attracts silly mega-prices for cruising, but Mrs T&T managed to achieve 90 minutes afloat for just nine quid, complete with her car.

The ferry journey to the mainland is usually 20 minutes, but a combination of heated seats, Bluetooth and Robbie Williams at full volume ensured she made the crossing multiple times, while awaiting the RAC. Her flat battery just sniffed at the emergency jump leads on the ferry!

The really funny thing hadn't yet happened. She was planning to go shopping before a hospital appointment. The shopping forgotten, she turned up at the wrong hospital in the wrong town. But bang on time.

She's still cursing Royalty for their insistence hospitals be named after them. You can apparently have too many Queens!

Greeting card shops don't do "Have a Happy Breakdown" products, but it does give an excuse to cover Card Factory again. And Petra Diamonds too, just 'cos we were asked.

CARD FACTORY (LSE:CARD)

Firstly, Card Factory has experienced quite a nasty tumble for some reason. Quite unsmilingly, we'd proposed a target of 361p last time this was covered and the share being spiked to 359p the day prior to a savage reversal was not visually fair. Or probably ethical.

We're not impressed with the savage reversal shown, as below 277p looks like reaching 250p and doubtless some sort of bounce. The problem comes should the price trade below 250p due to 213p calculating as bottom.

This unfortunately breaks the uptrend since the listing commenced in its current form in 2014, placing the share price in a region where our ultimate bottom of 150p appears viable.

It needs a miracle above 345p to regain the prior trend. We're not hopeful.

PETRA DIAMONDS (LSE:PDL)

Petra Diamonds has more running downtrends than you can shake a stick at and, importantly, one thing they had in common was that ultimate the bottom was lurking at 25p. However, something odd happened this week as the uptrend since 2009 was at roughly 61.443p.

Of slight interest was a surprising bounce despite the share breaking below 61.4p twice. The situation now is of weakness below 59.25p driving the price to 25p and hopefully a solid rebound.

Near term, however, it appears some effort is being employed to respect the integrity of the long-term uptrend. As a result, above 71.25p near-term should generate a fairly useless 75p. Secondary, if bettered, comes in at 85p, which challenges the immediate downtrend.

Only if above 85p dare we express hope, as 106p enters the picture. Surprisingly, this would suggest a challenge of the medium downtrend later this year!

In summary, this is obviously showing signs of a bounce, along with presenting a fairly tight stop level at 59.25p, though obviously the spread shall be important.

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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