BTC/USD Technical Analysis – 17th April 2014

Bitcoin has been fluctuating between 530 and 470 over the past 24 hours, it seems this may continue for the next few candles, but with the bears aiming to gain the upper hand.

Let's take a closer look at the current BTC/USD H4 chart below (click to expand):

I’ve performed the Fibonacci study from the low of the month at 382, until the high of the month at 545.

Yesterday in my BTC/USD analysis, I mentioned an important point concerning the Stochastics, "even though the K period has long since crossed the D period, the trajectory is very shallow, almost horizontal, this is often a sign of a weak trend, and I’d be surprised if there we going to be seeing much activity over the next few candles." Indeed, the activity proved to be rather rangy, with no clear direction. However, the Stochastics are now beginning to attain more of a steeper trajectory, indicating the bears are beginning to take hold, although of course we cannot rely solely upon this. We do have other technicals pointing to further selling, such as the Accelerator Oscillator and Awesome Oscillator turning red.

The problem from a purely technical perspective is, there are conflicting signs on the higher timeframes, especially on the Daily. Hence this is one of the reasons why we are seeing such a fight between the bulls and the bears. The fight is likely to continue for some time yet, in the short term the bears will probably show greater strength, and I'm expecting another test of the 50% mark at 463, marked in blue, but don't be surprised to see further consolidation over the next few candles, since we can already see how the upper and lower Bollinger bands are starting to converge together, a key hallmark of lessening activity within the market.