Is the Short-term Chart for Ethereum Bullish or Bearish?

See Figure 1 below. Here I plotted about six months’ worth of daily candles with several important technical indicators (TIs):

• A Relative Strength Indicator: The RSI5
• Three simple moving averages: 20-day (dotted green), 50-day (blue), and 200-day (red)
• The Bollinger Bands: solid green
• The Ichimoku cloud: see here, aka “The Cloud”.
• The Moving Average Convergence/Divergence: MACD
• Money Flow Indicator: MFI14

I also included a trend line (purple), which is not as objective as TIs, but certainly useful. Albeit there are many more TIs, these six are my bread-n-butter indicators to help assess the cryptocurrency’s most likely trend. Let’s work our way down.

Figure 1. Ethereum daily chart with technical indicators

• The RSI5 is currently<70, but has been trying to stay above it recently. Regardless, it has clearly not stayed above that level for long. Thus, it signals weakness. Bulls 0, Bears 1.
• ETH is below its 200d SMA, but above its 20d and 50d. Thus it is technically in an intermediate-term uptrend but in a long-term downtrend. It will have to close above the former to re-establish a new Bullish uptrend. Compare now with October-December 2020, for example. Bulls 1, Bears 1.
• The crypto is in “The Cloud.” When it is above it, good times tend to happen, but when it is below it expect lower prices. Compare now with October-November 2020, end since December 2020 for example, respectively. Bulls 0, Bears 1.
• The MACD is on a buy and is trending higher, albeit slowly, and with price not making much progress over the past several weeks, momentum indicators can be misleading. Regardless up is up, and buy signal is a buy signal. Bulls 1, Bears 0.
• Money is flowing back into ETH, but not at a strong clip. It is not even above 80, like in early October last year. Bulls 0, Bears 1.
• Price is at the upper Bollinger band, and the bands are expanding slightly which indicates strength. But ETH will have to “ride the band” like in October-November last year to signal the Bulls are in charge. Until then it is a neither/nor set up: Bulls 1, Bears 0.

Lastly, Ethereum did break out above the (purple) downtrend line that has held all the upside in check this year so far. The ascending shorter arrows show the upside potential the breakout has based on the fact ETH bottomed three times this year at around $2435, excluding the less important intraday wicks. The upside target is in this case around the 200d SMA: $3500. Bulls 1, Bears 0

Bottom line: the chart is currently neutral

The overall cumulative verdict based on these TIs and trendline breakout is Bulls 4 vs. Bears 4. Thus, the current price chart for Ethereum is neutral based on this simple but effective tally. A breakout above “The Cloud” at around $3040 is needed to give the Bulls the edge to target the 200d SMA. However, a fall below “The Cloud” and the 20d SMA, can target the 2300s once again. Thus, the Bulls and the Bears will continue to slug it out on the trading floor, social media, blogs, and comments sections. But ultimately, the chart will tell us who the winner will be so watch the breakout vs breakdown.