A Boeing 737-800 airliner belonging to Ukrainian International Airlines has crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran’s international airport, with an estimated 176 passengers on board feared dead. According to reports from Iranian state news agency which quoted the airport’s spokesman, the plane went down after a “technical failure following a fire”.
These are indeed troubled times for Boeing, which saw the ousting of its CEO late last year as a result of the fallout from the two tragic Boeing 737 MAX air crashes which resulted from a software malfunction.
In December, another software glitch was blamed for the failure of an unmanned flight of the Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner astronaut capsule to reach the International Space Station. A joint investigation with NASA is pending.
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Boeing stocks started the day on the upside in pre-market trading, but Boeing’s share price is now down 1.7% in premarket trading after the news of the crash in Iran. The stock has now been pushed back below the 337.80 resistance level, where previous 6 Dec 2018 and 8 August 2019, as well as previous lows of 13 May, 29 July and 30 Oct.
Continued downward pressure on the stock could bring it into contact with the immediate support target at 327.45, with further support targets found at 318.16 (previous lows of 10 Dec 2018 and 15 Aug 2019) and 310.84 (previous lows of 26 Nov 2018 and 3 Jan 2019).
On the flip side, if Boeing is able to shake off this latest setback, we may see some buying pressure which needs to push price above 337.80 and sustain it above that level with at least two successive daily candle closes. Only when this occurs would there be a possibility of a test of 346.98 as the next resistance target, with 360.11 and 366.98 lying further ahead.