It’s incredible how a couple of lines that I drew on the Barclays share (LON: BARC) price chart at the start of this year are still relevant. Actually, the shares have remained stuck in a broad trading range in 2023 without any significant breakout in either direction.
Due to a strong rebound in oil prices and the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, UK-listed energy stocks had a strong rebound on Monday. This resulted in an uptick in the FTSE 100 index, which gained 12 points in the first trading session of the week.
However, most of the bank shares, including Barclays, turned negative on Monday. At press time, Barclays shares were down 1.27%. The shares faced another rejection from the 200 MA last week, as I forecasted in my previous analysis.
According to a recent report, Barclays has started to lay off 3% of its global investment banking workforce. As per the sources familiar with the matter, around 300 people can lose their jobs in this round of cuts. Last week, 4 Barclays employees in the San Francisco office were told to leave.
Metro Bank CEO Daniel Frumkin recently disclosed that Barclays Bank is interested in buying its GBP 3 billion mortgage portfolio. Although Barclays declined to comment on the news, the Metro Bank stock was up 11.38% on Monday.
Not a lot has changed since I last analyzed LON: BARC. You can add the following range on your tradingview chart and observe how the price respects these levels in the coming weeks. As I forecasted, the bank stock failed to break above the middle of the trading range and got rejected from the 200 MA.
This is in line with my bearish Barclays share price forecast with a downside target of 142p. The invalidation of this outlook will be a clear breakout above 160p, which seems unlikely in the current market conditions.
I accurately predicted the rejection of the Barclays stock from the 160p level in multiple forecasts. You’re also welcome to follow me on Twitter for my updated analysis of other UK shares.
This post was last modified on Oct 09, 2023, 15:21 BST 15:21