Bitcoin Price Analysis 05/16/2016 – On Track Channel Resistance

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Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

• Bitcoin price is still trending higher on its short-term time frames, moving inside an ascending channel on its 4-hour chart.
• Price has bounced off the channel support and 100 SMA earlier on and is slowly making its way up to the top again.
• Sustained buying pressure could take bitcoin price back up to the channel resistance at the $465-470 levels, which line up with a longer-term ceiling.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is still above the 200 SMA so the path of least resistance is to the upside and the uptrend could carry on. However, the gap between the moving averages is narrowing so a downward crossover could be possible. If so, sellers could make another test of support and possibly push for a break lower.

Meanwhile, stochastic is starting to turn higher even though it just crossed down from the overbought zone. This suggests that bears are trying to regain control but buyers are putting up a strong fight.

RSI, on the other hand, is still on middle ground and barely offering strong directional clues at the moment. A selloff to the bottom of the channel could last until the $450 support area.

Market Events

Risk aversion seems to be in play these days, especially since top-tier data from China came in mostly weaker than expected over the weekend. Industrial production slowed from a 6.8% year-over-year gain in March to just 6.0% in April while retail sales fell from 10.5% to 10.1% instead of rising to the projected 10.6% figure.

Renewed concerns about a slowdown in China could weigh on risk-taking, thereby dragging bitcoin price down. On the other hand, the safe-haven US dollar could draw support.

To top it off, data from the US economy has been mostly stronger than expected. Headline retail sales jumped 1.3% instead of showing the estimated 0.3% drop while core retail sales posted a 0.8% increase versus the estimated 0.6% gain. Headline PPI was slightly weaker than expected with a 0.2% uptick versus the projected 0.3% rise while core PPI came in line with expectations at 0.1%.

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