3M (MMM): Building a Bullish Case Despite Headwinds

23 oct

With 3M's earnings yesterday, it’s the perfect moment to analyze the stock and assess the upcoming opportunities. The company is expected to have benefited from its restructuring actions, such as headcount reduction, likely lowering costs and improving margins this quarter. Its disciplined spending and restructuring savings could also boost profitability.

Despite these positive factors, challenges in 3M’s packaging and expression, along with home and auto care divisions, may drag down its performance. Lower consumer retail spending on durable goods is expected to impact its Consumer segment's results.



From a technical standpoint, 3M’s surge from the support zone recently was strong enough to shift the weekly trend from bearish to bullish. Such a structural change on the weekly chart is significant, as it's not common to see such a clean trend reversal. However, as often happens with sharp upward movements, we are now seeing a bearish divergence on the RSI. This divergence doesn’t mean a pullback is imminent but suggests that one could happen eventually.

Looking at the daily chart, there may be potential for 3M to move higher if wave 1 isn’t complete. Even if earnings were positive, we should still witness a pullback. We are looking to build a position by layering bids at key levels. Our first target entry is the gap high, followed by the gap low, which aligns with the 50% Fibonacci level. If the price continues to drop, we’ll continue adding bids down to the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement level. Our stop loss will be set below wave (2) to safeguard the trade. A break below this level would invalidate the bullish outlook and could result in a drop to $56, though this scenario seems less probable for the near future.