One of old techs beloved companies, Cisco, has been on an 8-month tear. But its recent earnings announcement, while not bad, was not well received by investors and The Street. Price gapped down more than 4% the day after the call and has been consolidating sideways since. As you can see in its daily chart below, price sits right on a confluence of support, including both horizontal and its rising uptrend line which, just coincidentally, is the bottom of the (blue) bearish rising wedge. On a longer-term time-frame, price is well above its rising 200 day moving average telling me any short-term concerns are, well probably just that, short term. But risk is clearly elevated right here so CSCO bulls have a decision to make if support does not hold.
If price were to break support and hold below, I have identified likely downside targets on the chart as T1 and T2. CSCO shareholders have to be open to the potential for further downside as price sits below both its declining 10 and 50 day moving average, telling us in the short term, the sellers are in control. This is made obvious by perusing the lower volume pane where the big volume is dominated by the red (selling) bars. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the slight bearish RSI momentum divergence and the head and shoulders top pattern which adds further caution to the stock continuing its move higher.
If the buyers can hold above the current support zone, it is likely we will see CSCO go on to make new, all-time highs. A break below and move to one of the lower targets would likely signal the (short term) end of its recent bull run and a much longer-term sideways consolidation, something most traders would prefer to avoid.