I kept refreshing the chart longer than I meant to. Not because every green candle deserves a victory lap, but because this one showed up while most of the market was doing the opposite. Raydium price has climbed more than 20% in a week, starting October near $1.82 and trading around $2.45 after an intraday poke toward $2.58. That is a fast trip for a token that spent part of the year rebuilding from a base near $0.60. The question sitting on the desk is simple and a little uncomfortable: does this push have enough fuel to clear $2.60, or is the market about to hand late buyers a lesson in gravity?
Why the Raydium Price Move Stands Out Right Now
Relative strength is one of those phrases traders throw around until it loses its edge. Here it still means something. Broader crypto has looked heavy, and yet RAY has been climbing through levels that used to stall it. A market participant even called the divergence impressive during the wider pullback. I tend to agree, with a caveat. Impressive is not the same as durable. A token can look strong for three sessions and still fail the fourth if the bid underneath it was mostly momentum money.
The larger recovery is the context people skip. RAY reclaimed $1.00, then $1.50, then $2.00. October’s advance has pushed it toward prices not seen since the sharp selloff late last year. That path matters. A token that only spikes from a dead chart is a different animal from one that has already rebuilt a staircase of higher shelves. The staircase does not guarantee the next step. It does tell you the buyers have been willing to defend prior ground.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the mismatch between the speed of the tape and the slower machinery underneath the protocol. Volume, fees, and buybacks do not move in the same hour as a four-hour candle. They set the floor the candle has to fall through. If that floor is rising while price is stretching, you get exactly this kind of argument: bulls say the structure is real, bears say the stretch is the tell.
A Week That Rewrote the Short-Term Map
Start with the raw path, because stories get slippery when the numbers are fuzzy. October opened near $1.82. By the latest reading, spot was hovering around $2.45 to $2.46, with a session high near $2.58. That is more than a 20% weekly gain, and it happened in a tape that was not handing out free rallies. From the session low area near $2.16, price surged through $2.50 before cooling back into the mid-$2.40s. Cooling is not the same as reversing. It is the market catching its breath.
I have found that these mid-rally pauses are where people talk themselves into certainty. One camp treats every dip as a gift. The other treats every pause as the top. Neither camp is paid to be patient. If you are actually trying to read the chart rather than win an argument, the pause is information. It shows where aggressive buyers stepped back and where resting orders still sit.
The nearby ceiling is tight. A band around $2.58 to $2.60 is the first real test. Clear it with conviction and the next pocket of liquidity sits closer to $2.65, with a further overshoot region discussed near $2.80. Fail it, and the first place the chart looks for a chair is $2.20 to $2.17. Deeper than that, the moving-average cluster around $2.04 to $2.00 becomes the line that would actually damage the bullish case.
What “Outperforming the Market” Actually Buys You
Outperformance is a relative score. It does not pay the rent by itself. Still, in a soft tape it tells you something about sponsorship. Capital that stays in a name while indexes sag is usually capital with a reason, or capital that is late and stubborn. Both can push price. Only one tends to stay for the retest.
Raydium sits at the center of Solana spot trading, so its token often trades as a proxy for activity on that chain. When people are swapping, launching, and parking liquidity, the protocol collects fees. When fees are partly recycled into the token, the loop gets tighter. That is the bull story in one sentence. The bear story is equally short: activity can cool, fee switches can be debated, and a crowded long can unwind faster than the fundamental narrative can update.
Protocol Activity That Keeps Showing Up in the Numbers
Charts get the headlines. The quieter support has been coming from the business itself. Third-quarter spot trading volume on the protocol reached $16.1 billion, up 17% from the prior quarter. Collected fees rose to $57.1 million. Those are not meme-candle stats. They are the kind of figures that make a buyback program possible in the first place.
The protocol directed $6.2 million toward RAY buybacks, picking up about 4.58 million tokens. That is roughly 1.7% of circulating supply. I do not treat buybacks as magic. They do not erase a bad chart, and they can be paused. What they do is remove inventory from the open market and create a recurring bid tied to usage. In a rally, that bid is easy to ignore. In a dip, it is the difference between a slide and a hole.
A buyback is not a promise that price goes up. It is a promise that some of the tokens which would have sat on the offer are no longer there.
Market structure note
There is a second activity thread worth keeping in view. Cumulative tokenized equity trading volume on the platform has crossed $6 billion. That is a different user than the typical memecoin rotator, and different users tend to stick around for different reasons. An October change to the constant-product market maker fee structure also routed 5% of creator fees back to the protocol. Small percentages compound when the underlying flow is large. They do not, by themselves, justify any specific price target.
How the Fee Loop Feeds the Token
Think of the protocol as a toll road that sometimes buys back its own shares with the tolls. Traders pay to swap. A slice of that payment becomes protocol revenue. A slice of revenue becomes open-market demand for RAY. If volume rises, the toll rises. If the fee share routed back to the protocol rises, the same volume produces a slightly thicker bid. The October adjustment is modest on paper. In practice it tightens the link between creator activity and the token.
None of this is a valuation model. Crypto still prices narrative faster than cash flow, and anyone pretending otherwise is selling you a spreadsheet costume. Even so, a token with a visible sink is harder to dismiss than a token whose only bid is social momentum. I would rather own the argument that has a mechanism than the argument that has a slogan.
- Spot volume of $16.1 billion in the third quarter, 17% higher quarter over quarter
- Fees collected of $57.1 million, the pool that makes buybacks possible
- $6.2 million deployed into roughly 4.58 million RAY, about 1.7% of circulating supply
- Tokenized equity flow above $6 billion, a stickier pocket of activity
- A fee tweak sending 5% of creator fees back to the protocol
The Recovery From the $0.60 Base
Earlier this year the chart looked finished to a lot of people. A base near $0.60 is the kind of level that attracts two crowds: bottom fishers and sellers who have already given up. The reclaim of $1.00 was the first proof that the base was more than a resting place. $1.50 confirmed that buyers were willing to pay up. $2.00 was the psychological door. October kicked that door and kept walking.
Levels reclaimed in sequence tend to flip into support, at least for a while. That is not a law. It is a habit of markets that still have memory. The memory cuts both ways. Traders who sold the late-2025 breakdown remember the pain, and some of them will sell into strength just to feel even. That supply is part of why $2.60 is not a formality.
Reading the Four-Hour Chart Without Falling in Love With It
On the four-hour view, price near $2.46 sits comfortably above a stacked set of simple moving averages. The 20-period average is around $2.17. The 50-period sits near $2.04. The 100-period is close to $2.01. The 200-period lags down near $1.69. When shorter averages live above longer ones and price lives above all of them, the trend structure is bullish. Full stop. That does not mean the next candle is green. It means the burden of proof is on the sellers until those averages start to flatten and cross.
The average directional index has climbed to 33.78. Anything above 25 usually says the existing trend has real strength. ADX does not tell you the direction. It tells you the move is not a lazy drift. Pair that with price above rising averages and you get a tape that wants higher prices until it does not. The “until” is the whole job.
Aroon is even more one-sided. Aroon Up at 100% and Aroon Down at 0% means the market has been printing fresh highs without a matching fresh low. That is dominance, not balance. Dominance feels great while it lasts. It also tends to flip hard once the first real lower high appears, because the indicator has nowhere to go but down from a perfect reading.
| Signal | Latest read | What it suggests |
| Price vs 20 SMA | About $2.46 vs $2.17 | Short-term trend still above the fast average |
| 50 / 100 SMA cluster | Near $2.04 and $2.01 | First serious support if the breakout fails |
| 200 SMA | Near $1.69 | Longer trend support, far from current price |
| ADX | 33.78 | Trend strength is meaningful, direction separate |
| Aroon Up / Down | 100% / 0% | Buyers own the recent swing, stretched |
The Daily Chart Is Where the Stretch Shows
Zoom out and the picture gets less comfortable. The daily chart has driven into a Murrey Math 8/8 resistance region around the current area after slicing through lower zones in a hurry. The next overshoot region sits around $2.60, with another area near $2.80. Those labels are map marks, not destiny. What they capture is the feeling you get when a market has traveled a long way without a proper rest.
Stretched is not a sell signal by itself. Strong trends stay stretched. The risk is that profit-taking shows up exactly where the map says resistance lives, and the people who bought the breakout have no cushion. If the breakout fails to hold, the first magnet is that $2.20 to $2.17 pocket. Lose that, and the conversation shifts from “healthy pause” to “did October overreach?”
I keep a simple rule for days like this. If I cannot explain the level I am leaning on without pointing at three indicators at once, I am probably narrating. The levels that matter here are boring: $2.60 above, $2.20 below, $2.00 as the line that would actually change the story. Everything else is color.
Liquidation Pockets and the $2.60 Magnet
The 24-hour liquidation heatmap adds a mechanical reason to care about the same zone the technicians already circled. After the surge from roughly $2.16 to above $2.50, the strongest visible cluster of potential liquidations sits around $2.63 to $2.67. A push into that band can force short covering. Forced buying is not organic demand, but it spends the same. It can carry price through $2.60 faster than a discretionary bid would.
There is fuel on the other side too. Clusters show up around $2.35 to $2.40, then again toward $2.20 and the low $2.10s. If late longs start taking profits, those pockets can accelerate a dip the same way short liquidations accelerate a rip. Heatmaps are not predictions. They are maps of where pain is stored. Markets like to visit stored pain when they get the chance.
Liquidity above the market is a reason price might run. Liquidity below the market is a reason the run can reverse just as fast.
A renewed move toward $2.63 would put that short-liquidation concentration in play and could open a path toward the $2.80 discussion zone if the breakout holds on a closing basis. That is the bull path. It requires follow-through, not a wick. Wicks into liquidation clusters often look like breakouts until the session closes back inside the range and everyone pretends they saw it coming.
Two Paths From Here, and the Invalidation for Each
Path one is the continuation. Price holds the mid-$2.40s, chews through $2.58, and accepts above $2.60. Shorts leaning on the round number get squeezed toward $2.65. If spot volume confirms and the four-hour averages keep rising, $2.80 stops being a fantasy level and becomes a measured extension. I would want to see the break hold for more than a single spike. Acceptance matters more than the print.
Path two is the fade. Price stalls under $2.60, loses the intraday higher lows, and slips back through $2.35. The $2.20 to $2.17 band is the first real test of whether this week was a breakout or a spike. A daily close under $2.00 to $2.04 would do more damage. That is where the 50- and 100-period averages live, and losing them would say the trend that ADX called strong has started to bend.
- Hold above $2.40 and press $2.58 to $2.60 with rising participation
- Accept above $2.60 and let liquidation flow carry toward $2.65
- Only then treat $2.80 as a working target rather than a headline
- If $2.20 fails, step aside and reassess at the $2.00 cluster
- If $2.00 fails on a closing basis, the October surge needs a new base
Why Overheating Is Not the Same as a Top
Fast rallies invite the word “overbought” the way summer invites complaints about heat. The word is often true and still useless. A market can stay overbought while it trends. What overheating actually warns you about is the quality of the next dip. When everyone who wanted in is already in, the bid on the first pullback is thinner. That is when a 4% dip becomes an 8% dip without any change in the protocol story.
Aroon at a perfect 100/0 split is the cleanest version of that warning. There is no recent low to lean on inside the indicator’s window. The first lower low will look dramatic even if it is only a return to the 20-period average. Traders who size as if the trend cannot pause are the ones who turn a normal retest into a liquidation of their own.
In my experience, the healthier rallies give you a dull session or two near the highs before they continue. Dull is underrated. It lets weak hands exit without crashing the book, and it lets new buyers build a position that is not entirely chase. If RAY simply goes vertical into $2.70 with no pause, I would trust it less, not more.
Solana Activity, Tokenized Assets, and the Demand Mix
Raydium does not trade in a vacuum. It is a venue. Venues do well when the chain they sit on is busy, and they do poorly when that chain goes quiet. The tokenized-asset flow is a useful tell because it is less dependent on a single narrative cycle. Equity-like tokens pulling cumulative volume past $6 billion suggests the order book is not only living on short-lived launches. Launches still matter. They are just no longer the whole story.
Launch tooling that lets creators pair against a wider set of assets also widens the surface area for fees. More pairs, more routes, more chances for a swap to touch the protocol. The risk is fragmentation. Too many pools can mean thin books and messy prices. The opportunity is capture. If even a modest share of that activity sticks, the fee line that funded $57.1 million last quarter has a path to stay relevant.
I would not build a price target out of that alone. I would build a bias. A protocol that keeps collecting, and keeps recycling a slice into the token, deserves a higher hurdle before you call the rally empty. Empty rallies exist. This one has at least a receipt.
What the Buyback Does and Does Not Do
Removing about 1.7% of circulating supply is noticeable. It is not a supply shock on the scale that rewrites a market by itself. The useful frame is recurrence. A one-off purchase is a headline. A program tied to fees is a habit. Habits show up on down days, which is when headlines are quiet and the bid actually matters.
There are limits. Buybacks can shrink if volume shrinks. Governance can change the split. A large holder can sell more in a week than the program buys in a month. Treating the $6.2 million figure as a floor under price is how people get stuck. Treating it as a tailwind is how you stay honest. Tailwinds help. They do not fly the plane.
Simple demand sketch, not a forecast: Usage rises → fees rise Fees partly fund buybacks Buybacks reduce float available to sellers Price still needs a buyer on the other side of every print
Moving Averages as a Map, Not a Religion
The stack from $2.17 down to $1.69 is wide. That width is both comfort and risk. Comfort, because there are several shelves where dip buyers can try to show up. Risk, because a trip from $2.58 to $2.17 is already a meaningful giveback, and a trip to $1.69 would erase a large part of the October story. Distance from the long average often marks the later stage of a swing, not the early stage.
Watch the 20-period average on the four-hour chart if you want a practical line. As long as pullbacks hold above it, the swing is intact. A close back under it, especially if the average flattens, is the first hint that momentum traders are leaving. The 50- and 100-period pair near $2.04 and $2.01 is the line I would treat as structural. Lose that pair and the bullish ordering starts to come apart.
People love to say a moving average “should” hold. Averages do not owe anyone a reaction. They are descriptions of where price has been. They become useful when enough other traders watch the same line and place orders there. That reflexivity is the only reason $2.17 matters more than $2.19.
Round Numbers, Memory, and the $2.60 Ceiling
$2.60 is not magic. It is close to the recent high, close to a mapped overshoot, and close to a cluster of short pain. That combination is enough. Markets often stall a little before an obvious level, run it by a few cents, and then decide. The decision is the close, not the wick. A wick through $2.60 that closes at $2.48 is a rejection. A close through $2.60 that holds the next session is acceptance.
Memory from the late-2025 selloff still hangs over this zone. Prices not seen since a breakdown attract two kinds of supply: people who vowed to sell if they ever got back to even, and people who short the retest because the last visit ended badly. Both have to be absorbed before the chart can treat the area as support. Absorption looks like time spent near the highs with declining but not collapsing volume. It rarely looks like a straight line.
A Practical Way to Frame Risk Without Pretending to Know
This is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold anything. It is a way to keep the scenario honest. If the idea is that Raydium price breaks $2.60, the idea is wrong if price loses $2.20 and stays there. If the idea is that the rally is exhausted, the idea is wrong if price accepts above $2.65 and the averages keep rising. Writing the invalidation down before the move happens is the only habit I have found that survives a volatile week.
Position size does more work than indicator choice. A name that just ran 20% in a week can give back 8% without breaking its trend. If an 8% dip would force you out in a panic, the size was the error, not the chart. The liquidation map is a reminder that both directions have accelerants. Respect the accelerants or they will introduce themselves.
- Upside trigger: sustained trade above $2.58 to $2.60, then the $2.63 to $2.67 pocket
- First support: $2.35 to $2.40, where nearby liquidation interest already sits
- Trend support: $2.20 to $2.17, aligned with the fast average
- Structural support: $2.04 to $2.00, the medium-average cluster
- Stretch target only after acceptance: the region near $2.80
What Would Actually Change the Bull Case
A single red day would not. A failed breakout that immediately recovers would not. The bull case weakens if volume dries up while price stalls under $2.60, if the four-hour ADX rolls over from 33.78 while price loses the 20-period average, and if the daily chart prints a lower high followed by a loss of $2.20. It weakens further if protocol activity stops showing up in the fee line that has been funding buybacks. Price can diverge from activity for a while. It rarely diverges forever.
The case strengthens in a less cinematic way. Sideways trade above $2.40, a series of higher lows, and a close through $2.60 that does not instantly reverse. Add a heatmap that starts to clear above the market because shorts have already been forced out, and the path toward $2.65 becomes mechanical rather than hopeful. Hope is not a level.
Sentiment, Relative Strength, and the Crowd’s Timing
Relative strength during a market pullback attracts attention, and attention attracts late money. That is not an insult. It is how trends get extended and how they get crowded. The comment that RAY’s behavior looked impressive is fair. It is also the kind of observation that spreads after a large part of the move has already printed. By the time a divergence is obvious on a screenshot, the easy part is often gone.
Crowded does not mean finished. It means the exit door is narrower. If you are trading the break of $2.60, assume other people had the same idea yesterday. The edge, if there is one, is in the reaction after the level, not in the prediction that the level exists. Everyone can see $2.60. Fewer people have a plan for a close back at $2.42.
A Closer Look at the Intraday Swing
The session that ran from about $2.16 to above $2.50 is the template for what both sides want next. Bulls want a repeat that starts from a higher low and finishes above the prior high. Bears want a repeat of the cooling phase, only deeper, so the mid-$2.40s become a lower high. Neither has been decided. Cooling toward the mid-$2.40s after tagging $2.58 is a normal exhale. It becomes a warning only if the next push fails to even retest $2.50.
Intraday ranges lie when you stare at them too long. A heatmap cluster at $2.35 can be support at noon and a trap by the close. I prefer to mark the zones and then let the daily close vote. The daily vote is slower, which is the point. Slow is how you avoid turning a four-hour story into a lifestyle.
Fees, Creators, and the Quiet October Change
Routing 5% of creator fees back to the protocol will not trend on its own. It should. Fee design is how venues decide who gets paid for bringing flow. Creators still keep the bulk. The protocol takes a defined slice. That slice can fund operations, incentives, or the same buyback pipe that already absorbed 4.58 million tokens. Small design choices compound when the venue is doing billions in quarterly volume.
There is a tradeoff. Take too much and creators leave. Take nothing and the token has no link to the activity it represents. Five percent is a modest claim on creator economics. Whether it is the right claim is a product question. For the chart, the relevant point is direction: the link between activity and protocol revenue got slightly tighter, not looser, in the same month price broke higher.
Comparing This Leg With the Climb Through $2.00
The reclaim of $2.00 was a psychological event. Round dollars collect orders. The push toward $2.60 is a structural event, because it sits near prior breakdown memory and near a mapped extreme on the daily. Psychological levels break more easily once a trend is underway. Structural levels ask for more volume. If this leg clears $2.60 on thinner participation than the leg that cleared $2.00, I would fade the enthusiasm even if I respect the trend.
Participation is the piece screenshots hide. A wide candle on rising activity is a different object from a wide candle on fading activity. The third-quarter volume figure cannot tell you what this week’s books look like, but it sets a baseline. A protocol that just printed $16.1 billion in a quarter has a plausible bid. Plausible is the correct word. Not guaranteed.
Scenario Table for the Next Swing
Scenarios are not forecasts. They are shelves you can update when the tape votes. I keep three, because two invites false certainty and five invites storytelling.
| Scenario | What you would see | Zone in focus |
| Continuation | Higher lows, close through resistance, shorts forced | $2.60 then $2.65 to $2.80 |
| Range | Failure at the highs, buyers still defend the fast average | $2.20 to $2.58 |
| Failed breakout | Loss of $2.20 and a test of the medium averages | $2.04 to $2.00 |
The range scenario is the one people underprice. Not every strong week becomes a trend week. Sometimes the market spent its energy getting to the door and then stands there. A range between roughly $2.20 and $2.58 would still leave the larger recovery intact. It would simply say October’s burst needs time to be believed. Time is not bearish. It is boring, which many traders mistake for the same thing.
Indicators Worth Watching, and Ones Worth Ignoring
Worth watching: the relationship between price and the 20-period average, whether ADX holds above 25, and whether Aroon Up stays elevated without an immediate collapse in price. Worth watching on the heatmap: whether the $2.63 cluster gets tested or whether price keeps stalling in front of it. Worth watching off the chart: whether fee and volume commentary stays consistent with a protocol that can keep buying its own token.
Worth ignoring, at least for a decision: a single oscillator extreme, a single social post, and any target that skips the level in front of it. $2.80 is a conversation for after $2.60, not instead of it. I have watched too many write-ups leap to the glamorous number and bury the invalidation in the last paragraph. The invalidation is the paragraph.
Working filter: trend stack intact + level accepted + invalidation defined = tradable idea. Missing any one of the three = wait.The Case for Patience Near an Obvious Level
Obvious levels attract obvious trades. Obvious trades get crowded, and crowded trades get messy. If RAY is going to break $2.60 in a way that matters, it will still be above $2.60 after the first wave of profit-taking. You do not need the first tick. You need the market to prove it can live there. That proof usually costs a few cents of entry and saves a lot of regret.
Patience is easier to preach than to practice when a token is up 20% and the averages are perfectly ordered. The feeling that you are missing it is the product being sold. Sometimes you are missing it. More often you are being invited to provide exit liquidity for someone who bought $1.90. There is no shame in either outcome if the plan was written down.
How Deep a Pullback Could Go Without Breaking the Trend
From $2.58 back to $2.17 is roughly a 16% retreat. That sounds violent if you only look at the week. It sounds ordinary if you look at the year that included a base at $0.60 and a reclaim of three major handles. A pullback into the fast average would reset Aroon, cool ADX a little, and give the daily chart room to build a higher low. That is the friendly version of profit-taking.
The unfriendly version does not stop at the average. It slices $2.17, tags the liquidation interest toward $2.10, and only finds balance near $2.00. That path is still compatible with a larger uptrend if $2.00 holds and volume expands on the bounce. It is not compatible with the idea that October’s breakout was clean. Clean breakouts do not immediately revisit the launch pad. They retest it later, from above, after the level has had time to flip.
Supply, Float, and Why 1.7% Is Not Nothing
Circulating supply is the inventory sellers can actually use. Taking 1.7% of it off the market in a single program window is a real reduction in available inventory, especially if a chunk of the remaining float is locked, staked, or simply inactive. Inactive supply is a hidden tightening. It does not show up until someone tries to buy size and discovers the offer is thinner than the market cap implies.
The reverse is also true. If inactive supply wakes up into the rally, the buyback is a teaspoon against a bucket. That is why price reaction at $2.60 matters more than the buyback press line. The tape will tell you whether inventory is scarce. The press line can only tell you that someone tried to make it scarcer.
A Note on Timeframes So the Signals Stop Fighting
The four-hour chart is bullish. The daily chart is bullish and stretched. Those statements can both be true. Traders get into trouble when they use the four-hour to justify a hold and the daily to justify a target, then ignore whichever one disagrees with the position they already have. Pick the timeframe that matches how long you intended to be involved, and let the other one set risk.
If the trade is a break of $2.60, the four-hour close is the ballot and the daily level is the context. If the trade is the larger recovery from $0.60, a dip to $2.20 is noise unless it starts to break the sequence of higher lows on the daily. Mixing those clocks is how a good read becomes a bad hold.
What I Will Be Watching Into the Next Sessions
First, whether $2.45 holds as a shelf or becomes a midpoint in a fade. Second, whether any push through $2.58 arrives with follow-through rather than a wick. Third, the gap between price and the $2.17 average: if it keeps widening, the stretch is getting less forgiving. Fourth, any sign that the fee-and-buyback loop is still operating in the background, because that is the part of the story the candle cannot fake for long.
I do not need RAY to break $2.60 this week for the larger recovery to stay interesting. I do need it to avoid giving back the entire October advance in a straight line. Those are different demands. The first is a trader’s hope. The second is the minimum evidence that the bid which carried price from $1.82 is still in the building.
Putting the Rally Back in Proportion
A 20% week feels enormous until you place it next to the trip from $0.60. Proportion cuts both ways. It argues against panic on the first red day, and it argues against treating $2.80 as a short walk. The market has already done a lot of work. Work that is already done is not work you get paid for again. The paid work, if it exists, is at the level in front of price, not in the story of how price got here.
Protocol receipts make the story sturdier than a pure momentum chase. $16.1 billion of quarterly spot volume, $57.1 million in fees, and a buyback that retired roughly 1.7% of the float are not decoration. Tokenized flow past $6 billion and a tighter creator-fee link add texture. Texture is not a target. It is a reason to take the bullish moving-average stack seriously instead of dismissing the whole move as a squeeze.
So will Raydium price break above $2.60? It has the trend, the relative strength, and a liquidation pocket that could help. It also has a stretched daily chart, a perfect Aroon reading that cannot improve, and a crowd that has already noticed. The break is possible. The hold is the part that counts. Until price accepts above that band, $2.60 is a question, not a destination.
Nothing here is investment advice. Markets change faster than write-ups, and a level that looks clean in the afternoon can look foolish by the open. If you trade it, trade the invalidation as carefully as the target. The chart will not remember how convinced you were.
