A Slowly Unfolding Treat

On the back of Foot Locker's rally after strong earnings, both NKE and UA are jumping as I write this. 

For a while now, NKE and UA have been lagging the market's post-Brexit advance to new highs. We had intermittently looked at them as quick short ideas, though they both had been firming up a bit better of late. 

On the weekly chart for UA, below, note the very well-defined consolidation dating back nearly a full year now, which came after the prior multi-year bull run.

The light blue lines denote the lower highs but higher lows by price, the essence of a neutral consolidation. But it is also a fairly obvious one, too, and anyone who follows NKE UA is well-aware of the slowly unfolding coil here, making it perhaps too obvious and thus ripe for traps. 

Bears, indeed, have plenty of chances to unravel the long-term trend for a complete wipeout. But now it seems as though it is getting late in the day, and bulls may be wrestling back the initiative for a run at the top line. At this point, I suspect a move over $45 on UA puts bulls in control for a potential upside break of the range. 

Headed into the autumn months, the next direction of NKE and UA and whether they can in fact sustain today's upside, should offer clues as to the next direction of the consumer in the retail space, too.