When the Hang Seng Index fell through the 50-day moving average on Tuesday, it caused alarm bells to ring with Hong Kong's technical analysts, breaking the rising trend that had been developing since April last year.
'Once that was cracked it opened up a path to medium-term correction,' said John Schofield, a director and founder of Tempus Investment Research.
The first support point was found yesterday at 12,800, where the market also found strong support in January. Then, the blue-chip index did not break the trend line, however. The fact that it had this time suggested 12,800 would be more of a transitional support point, providing the market with just enough strength to return to 13,100 to 13,200 before triggering the next slide, Mr Schofield said.
'The next time we get there [to 12,800] it will probably give way,' he said.
He then expects the index to drop all the way to 12,000, which would mean a fall of the same magnitude as in the previous correction, from 14,000 to 12,800. That would also bring the total correction to about 2,000 points or a third of the near 6,000-point gain between April and the end of last month, the sort of retracement people look for in a bull run.
Andrew Clarke, a director of sales trading at Kim Eng Securities, argued that support could be found in a wider band of 12,600 to 12,800, and as long as the market closed higher than that on a weekly basis, it should perform adequately. The next support is at 11,800.