Ford is on the 'road to nowhere,' Piper Jaffray technician says
Ford F is having its best year in nearly a decade.
The automaker's stock has surged 35% this year, its largest increase since 2010. It is also on track for its best quarterly increase since 2012.
Not all of Wall Street is sold on the stock's turnaround, though.
"I think it's too early to say that Ford's on the road to recovery. It might as well be on a road to nowhere when you look at this chart. You're still very much in a downtrend," Piper Jaffray chief market technician Craig Johnson said Friday on CNBC's " Trading Nation ."
"It's going to take a close above at least $10.15, maybe even $10.75 to reverse this longer-term downtrend. Frankly I'd give it a little bit more room and say a close above $11 would be a clear definable downtrend reversal," said Johnson.
Ford closed Friday at $10.39. It needs to rally 6% to reach $11.
"For me, I'm out. I'm not interested in the stock until you reverse the downtrend. Even though it's up 40%, I'm sticking with the technical rules and looking for that reversal," Johnson added.
Steve Chiavarone, portfolio manager at Federated Investors, is more positive on the automaker.
"We've been pretty neutral on the auto sector, but within that sector this is the one large-cap automaker that we own," Chiavarone said during the same segment. "They've held up a little bit better than some of their competitors in terms of sales declines and also when you look at Ford, they're in those categories that are doing quite well, like SUV, CUV and trucks."
Ford's total vehicle sales declined by 1.6% in the first quarter, better than the 7% decline for General Motors GM . Its truck sales rose by 4.1%, while SUV sales increased 5%.
"Yeah, [Ford's] up 35% but it's still 15% below its 2018 high just like most cyclicals, so this might have some room to go," said Chiavarone.
Disclosure: Federated Global Allocation Fund holds Ford.
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