Technical Analysis: Investors Watch Bitcoin, Nvidia, Repsol and Grifols

Technical analysis studies past price and volume behaviour to identify areas where supply or demand have acted strongly. It does not explain why a value rises or falls, but detects patterns that repeat. The most common tools are the 50 and 200-session moving averages, the relative strength index (RSI, which measures whether an asset is overbought or oversold), and trend lines.

In the same inquiry, very different profiles coexist. The large European banks on the list, UBS and Deutsche Bank, share a fundamental factor: their stock prices largely depend on interest rate developments and the perception of risk in the sector. UBS is still digesting the integration of Credit Suisse, absorbed in 2023, while Deutsche Bank has experienced a stock market recovery in recent years after a long restructuring phase. In stocks with prolonged trends, technical analysts usually look at whether the price respects its long-term averages or starts to lose them.

Repsol moves in sync with crude oil and refining margins, making it a stock very sensitive to geopolitics. Solaria, on the other hand, is one of the most followed photovoltaic companies on the Spanish stock market and tends to show much greater volatility, linked to electricity prices and the financing costs of its projects. Two stocks from the same broad sector, with technical behaviours that often go in opposite directions.

The Catalan pharmaceutical Grifols has been suffering from strong market distrust since 2024, following a report from the short-selling fund Gotham City Research that questioned its accounting and triggered a stock crash. In stocks that have suffered such sharp declines, technical analysis usually looks for signs of a bottom: lows that stop being breached, increasing buying volume or a break of the downtrend.

Nvidia has become the thermometer of enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. Its weight in US indices means that its movements pull the rest of the tech sector, and also influence the risk appetite that eventually reaches cryptocurrencies.

The presence of bitcoin on the list confirms that many investors are watching it with the same criteria as a stock. In its case, technical analysis has a peculiarity: the market operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, meaning that the charts do not present the typical opening gaps of the stock market. This continuous operation explains, for example, that tokenised stocks concentrate a good part of their volume when Wall Street is closed.

The macroeconomic context weighs as much as the chart. The recent strength of the dollar has been one of the factors putting the most pressure on the cryptocurrency; with the DXY index at 18-month highs, short positions against BTC have multiplied. For those operating with charts, this inverse correlation with the greenback is a variable that should not be ignored.

Long-term moving averages also serve as a reference in the rest of the crypto market. Several altcoins, such as SHIB, ZEC, XLM and SOL, are still holding above their averages, although with a fragile outlook.

None of these tools guarantee results. Technical analysis works better as a risk map than as a crystal ball: it helps define where to place a stop-loss or at what level a thesis is invalidated, but it does not anticipate news such as a disappointing quarterly result, a regulatory change or a report from a short-selling fund. In assets as volatile as Solaria, Grifols or bitcoin, technical levels can easily break when an unexpected catalyst emerges.