Head and Shoulders Top
The Head and Shoulders Top is another chart that may indicate a stock has
made a top. Usually a Head and Shoulders pattern will have a Head and two
Shoulders with a Neckline connecting the bottom of the two Shoulders. The
stock price should find support at the Neckline however if it breaks below that
support then the stock price could spiral downward. I certainly
don't profess to be an expert in Head and Shoulder formations but here are a
few examples.
Here is a chart of EBAY which shows a top
(Head) being made in late April. Normally a Head and Shoulders pattern
has two Shoulders however there appears to be three Shoulders in this case
(points A, B and C). Determining exactly where to draw the Neckline can
be subjective but for this case I will define it from points D to E. In
theory the stock should find support at its Neckline if the price drops after
forming the second Shoulder (point B). In this case the price dropped
back to the Neckline and then rebounded to form a third Shoulder (point
C). EBAY then dropped again and fell below the Neckline and continued in
a downtrend until early August.
The next example shows a chart of LVCI.
The Head develops in mid-July as the stock makes a top. The two Shoulders
are defined at points A and B while the Neckline is defined by the line from
points C to D. Once again as the stock broke through its support area at
the Neckline it continued to drop for several mre weeks.
As I said before I'm not an expert on Head and Shoulder patterns but
hopefully these two examples will give you some idea what they might look
like. I usually focus more on the Climax Tops out of Parabolic Moves and
the Double Top patterns