Here's what's strange about the FTSE 100

Created 29/10/2017 at 22:06

FTSE this week (FTSE:UKX)

Sometimes trends are strange. For the week ahead on the FTSE 100 some nerves feel apparent. Given events in Europe, it seems sensible to suspect the markets are ready to panic if Spain opts to increase its political prisoner count and react harshly against its own population.

However, the FTSE, while nervous, appears to want to go up, and above 7,520 remains pointing at 7,561 making an important guest appearance. The strange thing we refer to is what happens if 7,561 exceeded?

In such a case, continued growth toward 7,602 is expected and, visually, this indicates a challenge against the prior high back in June. It's really odd how calculations change until suddenly a good reason for both a rise and pause appear.

It would be crackers not to anticipate some sort of stutter on the markets should 7,602 appear.

The crazy thing is, we're speculating about a near 100-point movement, which is quite a small amount in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps a combination of Brexit and the prospect of another Spanish Civil War are tending to keep things calm.

There's been a pretty obvious uptrend since September, which indicates the FTSE requires a break below 7,457 currently (the dashing red line) to indicate any form of a slowdown coming.

In the event of such a break, leakage down to an initial 7,403 remains sane with secondary, if broken, at 7,308 and a probable need for us to panic and revisit our numbers.

Hopefully, Spain behaves itself. We shall revisit during the week if things somehow move fast.

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.

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