Change of Character: Why the News Behind a Wash-Out Low Ranks Two Identical ASX Bases - Nufarm and GrainCorp, August 2026
Updated: Sep 1
Written by Christopher Hall, AdvDipFP | Authorised Representative, AFSL 526688 | Updated September 2026
Analysis sourced from Gary Glover (AR 259215), Authorised Representative, Novus Capital Limited (AFSL 238 168)
A change of character is the point at which a falling stock stops behaving like a falling stock — the wash-out low, the recovery, and then price action that no longer resembles the downtrend that produced it. Gary Glover (AR 259215), Authorised Representative of Novus Capital Limited (AFSL 238 168), who reviews ASX momentum stocks in a recorded weekly session with Finer Market Points, added a second half to that definition in the session of 25 August 2026: the chart is only one of the two things that has to change. The news behind the low has to change direction as well. This article covers what a change of character is, why the sequence of the news matters more than its existence, how two near-identical ASX bases were ranked against each other in August 2026, and how the weaker of the two is managed rather than discarded.
Gary Glover's recorded Finer Market Points session, 25 August 2026.
What Is a Change of Character in a Stock — and Why Is the Chart Only Half of It?
A change of character is a measurable break from a stock's own prior behaviour, not a judgement about whether it is cheap. The sequence Gary Glover described in the 25 August 2026 session runs: a period of tests at a level, a wash-out through it, and then a recovery that behaves differently from every rally that failed before it.
"You can normally sort of get a couple of tests there, then you sort of get a wash-out of the low. This actually happened — the wash-out and then the recovery." — Gary Glover, 25 August 2026 session
That structure has a long-established name. In Stan Weinstein's four-stage framework, set out in Secrets for Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets (1988), it is the Stage 1 base — the period after a decline ends and before an advance begins, when supply and demand change hands without much net price movement. In William O'Neil's pattern work at Investor's Business Daily, the same ground produces the cup and handle pattern on the ASX, a formation O'Neil's research associates with 40–50% of momentum leaders.
The limitation of all of it is that a base is a description of the past. It records that sellers have finished. It says nothing about who is arriving next, or why. This is a practitioner observation, not a formal study — but it is the reason Gary Glover treats the chart as half a signal rather than a whole one, and it is why the same base can be worth two different things depending on what produced the low.
The volume behaviour underneath that process — heavy, exhaustive selling into the low, then volume disappearing on the pullback that follows — is set out separately in the FMP guide to wyckoff springs asx trading.
Why Does an Upgrade Arriving After a Wash-Out Low Matter More Than One Before It?
Sequence is the whole argument. An upgrade that lands while a stock is still being distributed is absorbed by the selling already in progress. The same upgrade arriving after the sellers have exhausted themselves meets a different market — one with very little supply left to work through.
Gary Glover made that ordering explicit for Nufarm (ASX: NUF):
"There was a positive update which came in after that wash-out as well. So all of a sudden we've got a bit of a change in character from the stock, but also we've got a change in character from the news as well." — Gary Glover, 25 August 2026 session
The news event behind it is on the record and is specific. On 27 May 2026 Jefferies upgraded Nufarm to buy and lifted its price target 32% to A$3.50, against a closing price of A$2.91 that day. Analyst Ramoun Lazar attributed the change to "confirmation of cyclical inflection in Crop Protection and Seeds, alongside improved cashflow outlook that provides viable pathway to deleveraging", and noted that risks around leverage had abated. That rating and target belong to Jefferies; they are reported here as a matter of record and are not a Finer Market Points view or recommendation.
What matters for the pattern is not the rating itself but what the rating was responding to — a business the broker judged to have turned, rather than a share price that had merely fallen a long way. Gary Glover's anecdotal observation, developed across his trading career, is that an upgrade of that kind tends to be followed by higher prices "a month or two down the track there, in most cases". It is a tendency he has observed, not a forecast, and not a claim about any particular stock.
The related case — where the upgrade arrives twice, and the second one signals institutional buying rather than a single re-rating — is covered in how two consecutive earnings upgrades signal institutional accumulation.
The FMP Momentum Profile — accessible to FMP YouTube Momentum Profile members — included the relative-strength ranking for both names discussed here at the time of the 25 August 2026 session, giving members early access to the educational data discussed in this article.
Two Identical Handles — Does the News Behind the Low Rank Them?
Where two charts show the same structure, the reason the low formed is the tiebreak. GrainCorp (ASX: GNC) presented Gary Glover with a comparable formation in the same week, and he ranked it second — explicitly on the news rather than on the pattern:
"GrainCorp was sort of coming on the back of maybe a downgrade, whereas Nufarm was coming on the back of an upgrade. So that's probably the preferred one there." — Gary Glover, 25 August 2026 session
The hedge in that sentence is worth preserving, because the record is more interesting than a plain downgrade would have been. GrainCorp was not downgraded in the period in question. What sat behind its low was an exogenous weather event: the Bureau of Meteorology issued an El Niño watch in April 2026 and confirmed an El Niño event in June, and El Niño conditions typically bring drier weather to eastern Australia — a direct input to a grain handler's earnings.
The two situations, side by side:
Nufarm (ASX: NUF) | GrainCorp (ASX: GNC) | |
What moved the news | Business improvement — cyclical inflection in Crop Protection and Seeds, improving cashflow | Exogenous weather event — BOM El Niño watch, April 2026; event confirmed June 2026 |
Broker action | Jefferies upgrade to buy, 27 May 2026 | Bell Potter upgrade to buy from hold, 30 June 2026 |
Stated reasoning | Risks around leverage "have abated"; deleveraging pathway | "The most damaging phase of El Niño" had already occurred from a share-price perspective |
Price target | Raised 32% to A$3.50 (close A$2.91) | Jarden neutral, target A$5.40 (shares A$5.15, 17 June 2026) |
Forecast changes | Upgraded | Jarden left forecasts unchanged, acknowledging downside risk |
Read down that table and the distinction is not upgrade versus downgrade at all. Both names attracted an upgrade. Nufarm's came because the business had improved. GrainCorp's came because the share price had fallen far enough — more than 20% from the April El Niño watch, which Bell Potter analyst Jonathan Snape described as "one of the largest downward movements the stock has experienced in a BOM El Niño watch-event phase", steeper on his reading than every prior instance except 2002-03, when GrainCorp fell around 26%. Jarden's analysts, holding a neutral rating, made the unresolved part plain: an El Niño declaration does not guarantee a bad crop, and northern and central regions had seen significant rainfall since mid-May, so they left their forecasts where they were while acknowledging the downside risk.
A re-rating premised on damage already being priced is a different proposition from a re-rating premised on the business turning — the first depends on an outcome nobody yet knows, and the second on one that has already been observed. That is what separates two charts that look the same.
How Is the Weaker of Two Identical Setups Managed Rather Than Rejected?
Gary Glover did not discard the weaker of the two. He kept it and changed how it would be held — the practical distinction between ranking a setup and refusing it. GrainCorp was above its 50-day moving average with two higher lows in place when he reviewed it, but still inside a broader downtrend, which he described as coming from a position of weakness. His response was a tighter stop beneath the most recent congestion, on the reasoning that a base built from weakness has less room to be wrong before the thesis is broken.
The pattern also produced a variation worth naming, because it is a common source of premature entries:
"Sometimes we see those lower handles and then we see another handle as well. So you can get handles within handles as well." — Gary Glover, 25 August 2026 session
A handle that forms below the prior high can be followed by a second handle at the high itself. The first is not automatically the entry — it may simply be the first of two, and Gary Glover flagged the old high as the level where the formation would actually be tested. For a trader, that turns a single decision into a sequence: identify the structure, wait for the level that matters, and size the position against the stop the structure dictates rather than a preferred percentage.
Where the base sits relative to its sector is the layer above both of these, and the filter for it is set out in Why Momentum Trading Success Depends on Sector Strength.
Update — 1 September 2026: Nufarm's Base Continues to Tighten, With a Fertiliser Supply-Chain Catalyst
Gary Glover's anecdotal observation from the 1 September 2026 FMP session is that Nufarm (ASX: NUF) has continued building on the base this article covers — breaking back above two or three of its prior swing highs, with price action tightening into what he described as another VCP/cup-and-handle continuation on top of the April upgrade already discussed above.
"We've basically broken above two or three of the prior highs as well... it's got a little bit of momentum here at the moment, though volumes have sort of tightened up — we've got another sort of tightening pattern there, where the VCP, cup and handle again." — Gary Glover, FMP session, 1 September 2026
This is Nufarm's VCP tightening building on the same base structure identified in the analysis above — a further, later-stage confirmation rather than a new signal.
Christopher Hall raised a sector-level catalyst behind the move during the same session: a portion of global fertiliser supply moves through the Strait of Hormuz, and renewed attention on that route has fed into planting-season supply uncertainty in Australia and globally. Christopher Hall was explicit that he did not have confirmed up-to-date figures on the exact proportion affected, so this is noted as directional sector context Gary and Christopher discussed live, not a sourced statistic.
Gary Glover's observations in this update are anecdotal, developed across his trading career — not a formal study. Remember that past performance is no guarantee of future results, and all trading involves risk.
Conclusion
A change of character has two halves. The chart supplies the first — a wash-out, a recovery, and price behaviour that no longer matches the decline before it. The news supplies the second, and it is the half that ranks two charts that otherwise look identical. In August 2026 both Nufarm and GrainCorp carried an upgrade behind their lows, but only one of those upgrades described a business that had improved; the other described a share price that had fallen far enough for a broker to judge the worst as priced. The weaker of the two was not rejected — it was managed tighter, against a structure with less room to be wrong. What follows from here is observational rather than a signal: whether GrainCorp's second handle holds at its prior high, and whether the season validates or breaks the premise that the damaging phase has passed. Gary Glover's weekly session recordings work through setups like these as they form.
The analysis in this article draws on Gary Glover's recorded session and the FMP Momentum Profile data, which is published daily and accessible to FMP YouTube Momentum Profile members. Members receive early access to the educational data that forms the basis of articles like this one. For information on FMP YouTube Momentum Profile membership, visit the FMP YouTube membership page.
Remember that past performance is no guarantee of future results, and all trading involves risk.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "change of character" mean in trading?
It describes the point at which a stock stops behaving the way it has been behaving. In a downtrend, that means the sequence of lower lows ends, a wash-out through support is recovered rather than extended, and the rally that follows holds where previous rallies failed. It is a description of a measurable break in behaviour, not a valuation judgement, and Gary Glover's addition to it is that the news flow behind the stock should change direction at the same time.
Why does a falling stock turn — what actually changes at the low?
Supply runs out. A decline continues while there are still holders willing to sell into every rally; it ends when that group has finished, which typically shows up as heavy volume into the low followed by very light volume on the next pullback. What changes is not sentiment in the abstract but the balance of who is left to sell. A news catalyst arriving after that point meets far less resistance than the same catalyst arriving during the decline.
Does the news behind a base matter, or is the chart enough?
Gary Glover's position in the 25 August 2026 session is that the chart is half of it. A base records that selling has finished — it says nothing about what arrives next. Two stocks can show an identical wash-out, recovery and handle while the reasons behind their lows differ completely, and in that situation the news is the only thing available to rank them. This is a practitioner observation rather than a formal study.
What is the difference between a stock upgraded because the business improved and one upgraded because the price fell?
The first rests on something already observed; the second rests on an outcome still unknown. Nufarm's May 2026 upgrade cited a cyclical inflection in its Crop Protection and Seeds businesses and an improved cashflow outlook. GrainCorp's June 2026 upgrade cited the share price having already absorbed the most damaging phase of an El Niño event whose crop impact had not yet been determined — with another broker simultaneously holding a neutral rating and leaving its forecasts unchanged.
What is a handle within a handle, and which one is the entry?
A handle that forms below the prior high can be followed by a second handle that forms at the high itself. The lower one often looks like a completed formation and resolves into further consolidation instead. Gary Glover treats the prior high as the level where the pattern is genuinely tested, which means the first handle is not automatically the entry point and a trader working from it may be positioning ahead of the level that decides the outcome.
How does a Stage 1 base become a Stage 2 advance?
In Stan Weinstein's framework, Stage 1 is the basing period after a decline and Stage 2 is the advance that follows. The transition typically shows as a break out of the base range on expanded volume, followed by a pullback that tightens on lighter volume rather than giving back the move. Gary Glover applied that language directly in the 25 August 2026 session when describing a stock that had cleared its range and held the breakout on reduced trade.
What are the risks of buying a base that formed on an exogenous event like El Niño?
The event is unresolved. A weather-driven decline can be re-rated on the view that the worst is priced, and the season can still deliver a materially worse outcome than the market assumed — or a materially better one. Traders in this situation may wish to speak with a qualified financial adviser. The structural point is that a base built on an unresolved external variable carries a different risk profile from one built on a business improvement that has already been reported.
Sources
# | Source | Type |
1 | Gary Glover (AR 259215), Novus Capital Limited. Recorded Finer Market Points session, 25 August 2026 (https://youtu.be/ww7bUU3ntC0) | Practitioner session |
2 | Ramoun Lazar, Jefferies, 27 May 2026, Nufarm upgrade to buy — price target A$3.50 (reported by Dow Jones Newswires) | Published research |
3 | Jonathan Snape, Bell Potter, 30 June 2026, GrainCorp upgrade to buy from hold (reported by Dow Jones Newswires) | Published research |
4 | Jarden, 17 June 2026, GrainCorp neutral rating maintained, target A$5.40 (reported by Dow Jones Newswires) | Published research |
5 | Stan Weinstein, Secrets for Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets, 1988 | Published research |
6 | William O'Neil / Investor's Business Daily / MarketSmith, cup and handle pattern research | Published research |
7 | Australian Bureau of Meteorology, El Niño watch (April 2026) and El Niño event declaration (June 2026), as reported in the broker notes above | Published research |
All Gary Glover observations in this article are anecdotal practitioner observations developed across his trading career — not formal studies.
Related Finer Market Points Educational Resources
Cup & Handle Patterns: Why 40% of ASX Momentum Leaders Form This Setup — Christopher Hall
Wyckoff Springs ASX Trading: Complete Educational Guide for Australian Markets — Christopher Hall
How Two Consecutive Earnings Upgrades Signal Institutional Accumulation — Christopher Hall
Why Momentum Trading Success Depends on Sector Strength: ASX Lessons from Stan Weinstein — Christopher Hall
This article includes a general trading observation made by Gary Glover (AR 259215), Authorised Representative of Novus Capital Limited (AFSL 238 168), during a recorded Finer Market Points session on 25 August 2026. The observation reflects Gary Glover's general approach and his anecdotal observations developed across his trading career — it is general commentary only, and is not a formal study, not financial advice, and not a recommendation to trade any security. It was made in the course of that session and not in response to any individual's circumstances. Content has been edited and summarised by Finer Market Points for educational purposes.
Educational Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Consider your financial situation and seek professional advice before making investment decisions.
Finer Market Points Pty Ltd, CAR 1304002, AFSL 526688, ABN 87 645 284 680. This general information is educational only and not financial advice, recommendation, forecast or solicitation. Consider your objectives, financial situation and needs before acting. Seek appropriate professional advice. We accept no liability for any loss or damages arising from use. Authors and presenters may hold positions in discussed companies and investment products.
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