Stellar Rebound Falters on Renewed Selling Pressure

Key Moments

Stellar (XLM) traded around $0.16 on Thursday after gaining more than 8% in the prior session.
Futures open interest dropped to $96.76 million while the long-to-short ratio slid to 0.68, signaling a stronger bearish tilt.
Price remains below the 50-day and 100-day EMAs and under a key descending trendline, with $0.15 acting as critical support.

Derivatives Metrics Highlight a Bearish Bias

Stellar (XLM) was quoted near $0.16 at the time of writing on Thursday, consolidating after an advance of more than 8% in the previous day. Despite this short-term rebound, derivatives positioning continues to lean to the downside.

Futures open interest (OI) in Stellar slipped to $96.76 million on Thursday. OI has been sliding steadily since early January, indicating declining investor engagement and reinforcing a negative directional bias.

At the same time, XLM’s long-to-short ratio came in at 0.68 on Thursday, its lowest reading in over a month. A ratio below 1 underscores that short positions outweigh longs, reflecting expectations among derivatives traders for further weakness in Stellar’s price.

Metric	Latest Reading	Implication
Spot price (Thursday, time of writing)	$0.16	Holding recent rebound after 8% advance
Futures open interest	$96.76 million	Declining participation, bearish undertone
Long-to-short ratio	0.68	Shorts dominate, sentiment skewed lower

Technical Setup: Recovery Attempts Within a Bearish Framework

On the spot market, Stellar changed hands at $0.16 on Thursday, remaining below the falling 50-day and 100-day Exponential Moving Averages clustered in the $0.18–$0.21 area. Trading beneath these descending EMAs keeps the broader configuration under bearish pressure, even after the bounce from the $0.15 region.

A long-running descending resistance trendline, which was broken lower in the vicinity of $0.18, continues to restrict upside momentum as long as price stays under that zone.

Momentum Indicators Signal Easing Downside, Not Reversal

Daily momentum has begun to stabilize. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) has recovered toward the mid-40s after moving out of oversold conditions. Meanwhile, the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) line is positioned slightly above its signal line and near the zero line. Together, these signals point to moderating selling pressure but fall short of confirming a clear bullish turn.

Key Levels: Support, Resistance, and Scenario Map

In the near term, the tone is cautiously neutral with a modest recovery bias as long as the $0.15 floor remains intact. Immediate resistance is seen around $0.17, an area that has hosted recent intraday peaks. A more significant hurdle is located at $0.18, near the previous trendline breakdown and just below the 50-day EMA.

A daily close above $0.18 would pave the way for a move toward $0.19, where the 100-day EMA begins to exert influence, and then up toward $0.21, which represents a more distant ceiling within the prevailing downtrend.

On the downside, initial support is at $0.16, followed by the $0.15 zone, which underpins the nascent base-building effort. A decisive break beneath $0.15 would invalidate the emerging recovery narrative and could open the door to another bearish leg targeting the $0.14 area.

(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool.)