MW The charts warn that airline stocks face more worries than just rising oil prices
By Tomi Kilgore
The Jets ETF has fallen below two key uptrend trackers, a warning that the rally off last year's low may have run its course
The Jets airline ETF has broken below some key chart levels, which signals there's now more to the selloff than just rising oil prices.
Airline stocks were falling again on Tuesday, but investors can't simply blame worries about rising fuel prices this time, since crude-oil futures were actually pulling back pretty sharply.
The drop in the U.S. Global Jets exchange-traded fund JETS from last week, as the Iran conflict sparked a record weekly gain in oil prices, extended the selloff from early February by enough that the ETF broke through a couple chart levels that had stopped previous pullbacks.
Basically, the charts are warning that the yearlong uptrend in the sector that the tracker has been riding may have ended.
The Jets ETF fell 1.6% on Wednesday, even as crude-oil futures (CL.1) sank 9%. It has slumped 10.9% so far this month and slid 18.6% since it closed at a six-year high on Feb. 6.
The ETF had fallen last week below an uptrend line that started at the April 8, 2025, low and connected to the low seen on Nov. 20.
Given the Wall Street adage that the trend is your friend, trendlines are among the simplest tools chart watchers have at their disposal. And according to the Dow Theory of market analysis, which has remained relevant on Wall Street for more than a century, a trend remains intact until there is a clear reversal, and the break of a trendline is one of the easiest ways to see when that reversal occurs.
The ETF has also closed below its 200-day moving average, which many chart watchers view as a dividing line between shorter-term and longer-term trends, for the first time Aug. 1. Since then, the 200-DMA had stopped the ETF's declines later that month, and again in late November.
Usually, uptrends of that length don't go down without a fight. After support gives way, there is often a bounce back to test the breakdown point - if prior support has turned into strong enough resistance to cap that bounce, further declines become more likely.
The Jets ETF rose slightly on Monday to snap a six-session losing streak but could not quite get back to the broken 200-DMA. It made another attempt on Tuesday - the ETF was up as much as 1.7% at an intraday high of $26.22, above the 200-DMA at $25.88 - but it failed again, closing at $25.35.
The 29% rally in crude prices since the Iran conflict began - even with Tuesday's decline - is certainly a worry for airline investors. Fuel is the sector's second-highest expense, behind only labor. But there's a little more to it than that.
As headlines about geopolitics seem to be getting worse rather than better, consumers may show a "hesitancy" to travel and a tendency to think twice about discretionary spending, analyst Robert Mollins at Gordon Haskett Research Advisors told MarketWatch. He believes that's likely more of a shorter-term phenomenon, however, as once the geopolitical headlines start improving, demand for travel should resume.
Some downside levels to watch with the Jets ETF are $24.27, which would mark the 50% retracement of the rally off the April 8, 2025, closing low of $17.37 to the Feb. 6 closing high of $31.16.
Then there's the Nov. 20 closing low of $23.68, where both the uptrend line and 200-DMA had stopped the last pullback. And for Fibonacci followers, a 61.8% retracement of the uptrend comes in at $22.64.
To the upside, the key levels to watch are the 200-DMA and the previously broken uptrend line, which extends Wednesday to about $26.60.
-Tomi Kilgore
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 10, 2026 17:07 ET (21:07 GMT)
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