Judgement Time for A-Shares

A short-term head-and-shoulders pattern has the chartists looking for a possible test of the Shanghai Composite's 2016 low. The pattern suggests a target price of 2700, which is not far from the low of 2638. This is it for the ChiNext analog as well. Back on March 22 I said it had about 30 trading days to go and time has run out. Either this is the sell-off that will carry the Chinese markets to new lows, or the analog is busted as a predictive tool (though lower lows are still possible, the analog's timing will be shot). The low for the ChiNext is 1794.

In percentages, a nearly 10 percent drop in the Shanghai Composite or a drop of more than 15 percent for ChiNext are needed to usher in a new down phase of the bear market.