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This stock tends to travel in semi-chaotic, yet powerful thrusts, that can be difficult to trade with a long-term trend following method, notes Donald Pendergast of SentientTrader.com, but it could offer endless trading opportunities.

Although it took shares of Baker Hughes (BHI) nearly seven weeks to finally hammer out an identifiable double bottom pattern late last year, for bullish traders and investors the wait proved very worthwhile, with BHI soaring higher for much of January 2013. With the stock in the early stages of forming a large-scale triangle pattern—suggesting the possibility of strong moves in either direction once it completes—now might be a good time to size up the current price cycle and money flow trends in this key oil services group stock.

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Watch for the upper portion of the green cycle low time/price projection zone to see if it offers meaningful support.

BHI, like many of its large-cap brethren in the energy sector, tends to travel in semi-chaotic yet powerful thrusts that can be difficult to trade with a long-term trend following method, but for those who can be happy with swing moves lasting four to seven days, BHI appears to be a stock offering a near endless supply of trading opportunities. The use of price cycle analysis can be of benefit to such traders, particularly when high probability cycle high/low turning points can be identified—sometimes well in advance of the actual reversal; in BHI's case, its 10-, 20-, and 40-day cycles are all in strong agreement that a multi-cycle low is due (green boxes on chart) by no later than February 12, 2013, and that the maximum decline into the low should be around the 41.89 area. Note that the stock's latest swing high is actually one of the upper anchor points for the triangle pattern; there are plenty of other traders aware of this too, and the odds are high that BHI will continue to drift lower into some part of the green time/price projection zone before attempting to stage another rebound and possible touch of the upper triangle boundary.

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