StubHub shares climbed for three consecutive days. Jason Bazinet from Citi changed his rating from neutral to buy. Retail traders saw the word "upgrade" and assumed this meant something.
The stock went up before the upgrade. Then the upgrade happened. Then the stock went up more. Causality has left the building. Technical analysts everywhere remain unbothered. The chart showed higher highs and higher lows. It would have done that if Bazinet stayed home and watched reruns of The Price is Right.
Three days of gains. Not three weeks. Not three months. Three days. StubHub sells overpriced tickets to events you can't afford while taking a cut that would make a loan shark blush. Bazinet looked at this business model on a Tuesday and thought it was neutral. By Friday he thought it was a buy. What happened in those 72 hours? Did StubHub cure cancer? Did they find oil under Scotiabank Arena? Did they figure out how to charge a convenience fee on the convenience fee?
The article calls this a "tick higher." Ticks are what you find on a dog. They latch on. They suck blood. They make you wonder how you let this happen. Retail traders read "Citi upgrade" and bought shares like Bazinet personally guaranteed their kids' college fund.
Here's what matters: resistance at the previous swing high, volume trends, and whether the moving averages are stacked properly. Here's what doesn't matter: one analyst changing his mind about a ticket resale platform because he needed to justify his salary that week.
Somewhere a day trader is texting his cousin about how he got in on StubHub because Citi likes it now. His cousin will ask who Citi is. He'll say it's a bank. His cousin will ask if that's good. He'll say yeah, probably. Neither of them will look at a chart. Both of them will lose money. Jason Bazinet will still have a job.
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