Starpharma (ASX: SPL) - Whether That Chart Is Really Trending Up
Cheryl Maley is presenting Starpharma to investors, which is what put the company in front of us. What follows is about the share price line and nothing else. Somebody pulls up SPL, sees 80 cents against 8.6 cents sixteen months ago, and says it looks like it is trending up. This piece tests that sentence with the measures a technical trader would use. The data is two years of daily closes and volume, 18 September 2024 to 18 September 2026, 508 trading sessions, cross-checked against the ASX company page and Listcorp. [R2] [R8]
All prices in this piece are as at the close of ASX trading on 18 September 2026.
1.00 WHAT THE CHART LOOKS LIKE
FIG. 01 is the whole two years. A year between 8.6 cents and 14.5 cents, a single step in September 2025, then a climb to 80.0 cents. The last close of 80.0 cents is 3.6 per cent under the highest price traded in the past twelve months, 83.0 cents, and 1.2 per cent under the highest close, 81.0 cents. The first impression survives contact with the chart. It does look like an uptrend.
2.00 THE MOVING AVERAGES, AND WHAT THEY ARE
A moving average is the average of the last n closing prices, worked out again each day so the window slides forward. The 200-day version is the one most professional traders watch, and it entered the charting canon through Edwards and Magee in 1948. [R7] Paul Tudor Jones is widely reported to use it as a risk filter, which is a statement about how one trader works rather than evidence that the line predicts anything.
On SPL the 200-day average is 58.4 cents and the price is 37.1 per cent above it. The 50-day average is 74.0 cents, which is 26.8 per cent above the 200-day. Both lines are rising, and the 200-day has lifted 6.5 per cent over the last twenty sessions alone.
The faster average is above the slower one, both are climbing, and the price is above both. That arrangement is what the trend-following tradition reads as an uptrend, so on this measure the reader's sentence is supported.
3.00 THE ONE SESSION THAT BUILT THE SLOPE
Most of that slope comes from a single day. On 22 September 2025 SPL opened at 20.0 cents against a previous close of 13.0 cents, an opening gap of 53.8 per cent. It traded as high as 25.0 cents and closed at 22.5 cents, up 73.08 per cent. Counted as a share of the compounded return, that one session is 26.1 per cent of the entire two-year move, which is Samso's own arithmetic.
The volume tells you it was an event rather than drift. 21,593,559 shares changed hands. The median of the twenty sessions before it was 216,495 shares, so the day ran at 99.7 times normal. FIG. 02 draws those twenty sessions on the same scale as the one that followed them, which is why they look like nothing at all.
A gap is an opening price away from the previous close, and the chart tradition treats a large one on a small company as an announcement until shown otherwise, and this one was. The ASX release lodged at 6.50am that morning was the Genentech licence agreement. [R4] What the chart records is that the market repriced the company in one session and has not gone back. Nothing since has traded at or below 13.0 cents.
Volume did not go back either. FIG. 03 shows median daily volume at 226,196 shares across the year before that session and 1,001,961 shares across the year since. A pattern drawn on a stock turning over a few tens of thousands of dollars a day is drawn by a handful of participants, and SPL is no longer that stock. Three opening gaps of 8 per cent or more appear in the two years, and all three fall on days the company lodged something the ASX marked price sensitive. [R1]
SAMSO TAKE A single session carrying a quarter of a two-year move is something to hold in mind when reading everything drawn from that series. The moving averages, the channel and the range all inherit that one morning. They describe the market accurately, and they do not tell you the market arrived at its view gradually, because it did not. So when a chart is built on one repricing, what is a reader actually measuring afterwards, the company or the day? |
4.00 WHAT ADX SAYS ABOUT THE SAME CHART
ADX, the Average Directional Index, was introduced by J. Welles Wilder in New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems in 1978, the book that also gave the market RSI, the Average True Range and the Parabolic SAR. It answers a different question from the moving averages. [R5] It does not say which way a price is going. It says how decisively it is going anywhere. Convention puts a trending market above 25 and a directionless one below 20, and those are conventions from the literature rather than a demonstrated result.
SPL's ADX reads 14.6. FIG. 04 shows where that falls. The measure peaked at 55.4 on 9 October 2025, in the weeks after the re-rate, which is exactly when the price was moving decisively. It last closed above 25 on 10 June 2026 and has been under 20 since 20 July 2026, forty-five sessions ago.
Wilder's two companion lines, +DI and -DI, separate the upward daily movement from the downward. They read 29.8 against 19.4, so what movement there is still tilts upward. The direction has not turned. The conviction behind it has thinned.
The Relative Strength Index, Wilder's again, compares recent gains to recent losses on a scale of nought to 100. It reads 59.9, which is neither of his thresholds. FIG. 05 shows why his overbought level of 70 travels badly here. SPL held above it for thirteen straight sessions twice, and the first of those readings came on a close of 22.5 cents. On a share being repriced, overbought usually describes speed rather than a level to sell into, and that is Samso's own reading.
5.00 THE RANGE SINCE AUGUST
A Donchian channel, named after Richard Donchian, a commodity trader active from the 1940s and one of the earliest systematic trend followers, draws the highest high and the lowest low of a set number of sessions. [R6] Price closing outside the channel is what traders call a break.
FIG. 06 draws the last six months inside that channel. The last close above the upper line was 5 August 2026, thirty-two sessions ago. Every close since 3 August has landed between 69.5 cents and 81.0 cents, a range of about 16 per cent, and the net movement across those thirty-five sessions is 7.4 per cent.
That is what a low ADX looks like when you put it back on the price chart. The share has been working sideways near the top of its own range, without falling out of it.
THE OTHER WAY TO READ THIS The same chart supports a flatter reading, and it deserves to be put as strongly as the first. Strip out 22 September 2025 and what remains is a company repriced by one licence agreement and carried since by the liquidity that arrived with it. On that view the moving averages are describing the long tail of a single repricing rather than a trend, which is what a 200-day average does after a step, since it keeps rising for months on arithmetic alone. ADX at 14.6 fits that reading at least as well as it fits a pause. Every figure here is drawn from one price series, so the six measures are not six independent witnesses. Both readings fit the data, and the chart alone cannot separate them. |
6.00 THE ENTITLEMENT OFFER STEP, AND A FEED ADJUSTMENT
Two features of this price line are not the market changing its mind, and both fall in the last three months.
On 15 July 2026 the company announced a fully underwritten entitlement offer at 57 cents a share, which completed on 11 August. [R3] New shares issued below the market price put a step in a price series, because each existing share now represents a slightly smaller slice. The offer document gives the last traded close as 76 cents and a theoretical ex-rights price of 73 cents, which is the size of that step as the company calculated it. This chart is drawn on raw traded prices, so the step is in it.
The second is invisible unless you look for it. Price feeds handle a capital raising differently from one another, and the series behind these figures carried an adjustment on eight July sessions and on none of the others. Samso restated those eight to raw traded prices, which the company's own 76-cent figure confirms.
7.00 WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS READING
Everything below can be seen on the chart itself, with no other document needed.
A close above 83.0 cents would put the share outside its 20-day channel for the first time since early August, and would say the range resolved upward. A close below 69.5 cents would take out the floor of the last thirty-five sessions.
ADX turning back above 25 while +DI stays above -DI would say the trend has found its conviction again. ADX falling further with the two directional lines converging would say the sideways stretch is settling in rather than pausing.
The median volume is the measure underneath all of that. If it drifts back toward the 226,196 shares of the pre-September-2025 market, the liquidity that makes this chart readable goes with it, and every pattern on it gets less reliable.
8.00 SAMSO CONCLUDING COMMENTS
The reader who said it looks like it is trending up is right on direction, and the measures back that reading. What the chart adds is proportion. One session in September 2025 did 26 per cent of the compounded move on 99.7 times normal volume, and it was an announcement rather than the market gradually deciding something. The twelve months since have been a genuine climb. The last seven weeks have not been a climb at all, and ADX at 14.6 is the measure putting a number on that.
None of this says what happens next. Technical measures describe what a price has done, and the academic record on using them to predict has been mixed for decades. Starpharma's chart says the company was repriced in one morning and has been holding that gain since.
ABOUT THE READING THE CHART SERIES Reading the Chart is where Samso analyses a company's share price and shows how the reading was arrived at, so a reader can run the same check on another stock. A Chart Read carries no Samso Call, and no entry, exit, stop, target or position size. An announcement is named only where the chart recorded it on that date. |
PREVIOUS SAMSO COVERAGE OF STARPHARMA A site search of samso.com.au on 19 September 2026 returned no piece on Starpharma and none on SPL. The same search returns Samso's published pieces on Race Oncology and EchoIQ, so the search itself works. This is Samso's first piece on the company, so there is no prior call, no prior figure and no earlier position to reconcile against. |
THE WORDS IN THIS PIECE, IN PLAIN ENGLISH Trading session. A day the exchange is open. There are about 254 in a year, so 120 sessions is roughly six months and 20 is roughly a month. Moving average. The average of the last n closing prices, recalculated each day. A 200-day moving average smooths out the daily noise and shows the longer path. Traders watch whether price is above or below it, and whether it is rising or falling. ADX, or Average Directional Index. J. Welles Wilder's measure of how strongly a price is trending, set out in New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems in 1978. It says nothing about direction. Above 25 is conventionally called trending and below 20 not trending. Those cut-offs are convention rather than a finding. +DI and -DI. Wilder's two companion lines to ADX. One measures the average upward movement between sessions, the other the downward. Whichever is higher is the way the daily movement leans. RSI, or Relative Strength Index. Wilder again, in the same 1978 book. It compares the size of recent gains to the size of recent losses on a scale of nought to 100. He suggested 70 as overbought and 30 as oversold. Those were suggestions rather than tested rules, and the record on acting on them is mixed. Donchian channel. The highest high and the lowest low over a set number of sessions, drawn as a band around the price. Named after Richard Donchian, a commodity trader active from the 1940s and one of the earliest systematic trend followers. Price closing outside the band is called a break. Median volume. The middle value of a run of daily volumes. Unlike an average, one enormous day cannot drag it, which makes it the fairer benchmark for asking whether a session was busy. Gap. An opening price away from the previous close, leaving a blank space on the chart. On a small company a large gap is almost always a response to something the company lodged. Logarithmic scale. An axis where each equal step is a tenfold increase rather than a fixed amount. It lets a 200,000-share day and a 21-million-share day share one chart and stay readable. Entitlement offer, and TERP. An offer of new shares to existing holders, usually at a discount. TERP, the theoretical ex-rights price, is the arithmetic price a share should be worth once those new shares exist. It is the size of the step the offer puts in the price series. |
References and sources
Prices and the number of shares traded come from Yahoo Finance and cover every trading session from 18 September 2024 to 18 September 2026, which is 508 of them. Dates are the exchange's own, in Sydney time. Eight sessions in July 2026 arrived carrying a rights adjustment that the rest of the series did not, and Samso restated those eight to raw traded prices. The restated 14 July close of 75.5 cents is the company's own 76 cents at two decimals, and it is the only cum price that produces the 73-cent TERP the company published. Announcement titles and dates are quoted as they appear on the ASX market announcements platform for SPL, read on 19 September 2026. Every chart is an original Samso illustration of sourced data, and no company figure or diagram has been reproduced. Every percentage, median and multiple in the piece is Samso's own arithmetic on that price series, recomputed independently of the measurement script.
[R1] ASX, Starpharma Holdings Limited (SPL) company page and market announcements, asx.com.au, read 19 September 2026. Source for the company name, the listing date of 28 September 2000, the industry group, shares on issue, and every announcement title and date quoted here.
[R2] Yahoo Finance, daily price and volume bars for SPL.AX, 18 September 2024 to 18 September 2026, retrieved 19 September 2026. The price series behind every figure and behind the cover.
[R3] Starpharma Holdings Limited, Fully Underwritten Entitlement Offer to Raise $32 Million, ASX announcement, 15 July 2026, and Successful Completion of $32 million Entitlement Offer, 11 August 2026. Source for the 57-cent offer price, the 76-cent last close and the 73-cent theoretical ex-rights price.
[R4] Starpharma Holdings Limited, Starpharma Announces License Agreement with Genentech, ASX announcement lodged 6.50am, 22 September 2025. Named here only as the release the chart recorded on that date.
[R5] J. Welles Wilder Jr, New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems, 1978. The origin of the Average Directional Index and the Relative Strength Index, and of the 25, 20, 70 and 30 levels quoted.
[R6] Richard Donchian, on the channel that carries his name. Widely attributed rather than checked against a primary copy in this build. The 20-day and 55-day versions were put to systematic use by the Turtle traders, described in Curtis Faith, Way of the Turtle, 2007.
[R7] Robert D. Edwards and John Magee, Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, 1948. Where the moving-average conventions used here entered the charting canon. Widely attributed.
[R8] Listcorp, Starpharma Holdings Limited (ASX:SPL) share price history, listcorp.com, read 19 September 2026. Used to cross-check the last five sessions and the OTCQX line.
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