Relative Strength Alert: Can the Bunzl PLC (LON:BNZL) share price keep rising?

Bunzl plc (LON:BNZL) beat earnings forecasts with its recent full year results - and the question now for investors is how its share price will respond over the near term.

For the fiscal year ended 31 December 2018, Bunzl revenues increased 6% to £9.08B. Net income increased 5% to £326.5M. Acquisitions boosted the figures, but the company noted that margins had come under pressure.

Finding stocks that can break-out and move higher on news updates is a tactic used by some of the world’s most successful traders. But it’s not a black-box strategy…

Indeed, knowing the factors that drive relative strength in share prices can help you find profitable momentum trades, too. I’m going to use Bunzl (LON:BNZL) as an example of how this can work.

How has the Bunzl (LON:BNZL) share price performed?

Bunzl is a conservative, large cap in the Diversified Trading & Distributing industry and it has a market cap of £8,243m.

Over the past year, the Bunzl share price has risen by a solid 19.8%.

But it’s important to put this in context and look at the market trend. After all, in a rising market where prices are up across the board, that gain might not be as remarkable as it seems.

As it turns out, the FTSE All-Share index actually fell over the past year, which means that stock prices fell on average over that period. So Bunzl has actually done better than it seems. Its shares have a 1-year relative strength of 21.0%.

Read on to find out what the evidence shows may happen next...

Why relative strength really matters

Relative strength is a crucial tool in the armoury of technical traders and investors. It’s an instant measure of how a stock has performed in comparison with a benchmark.

And while there are no certainties about which way a stock will move next, research shows that price trends often persist.

Studies by Narasimhan Jegadeesh and Sheridan Titman, who are leading experts on momentum, show that stocks with the strongest price strength tend to keep up the pace for anywhere up to one year.

But what causes this?

The answer is that investor behaviour plays a big role. Academics point to two key drivers:

• Under-reaction - prices are slow to move up because investors are hesitant to bid prices higher in stocks that have already been on a strong run.

• Delayed over-reaction - investors chasing rising prices attract the attention of other investors, who follow them into those trades, pushing prices higher and higher.

So the answer is that momentum in stocks with strong relative strength is at least partly caused by a virtuous circle of human emotion. Investors have to constantly re-price these improving shares in their own minds. 

It won’t always happen - and it might take some time - but when momentum takes over, it can push prices higher and higher.

What does this mean for potential investors?

Bunzl is currently among the stocks with the strongest six-month and one-year relative price strength in the market. But momentum on its own is no guarantee of future returns. 

To get a better idea about whether this momentum will continue, it's worth doing some investigation yourself. Indeed, we've identified some areas of concern with Bunzl that you can find out about here.