Here's a long-term chart of NMC. Of all the Alts its been around the longest so it could give us a better clue as to what is coming not only for NMC but the other major Altcoins (PPC, XPM, etc.) in the next few days:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6xg8qtbbv2nto4x/NMC Daily Chart - April 13 - Present.jpg
The NMC data on TradingView goes all the way back to NMC's introduction in November 2011. After introduction, it reached a high price of 0.03 BTC and I suppose has been in a steady decline since, although having a number of significant price spikes along the way.
Without looking at the whole history of NMC, but rather focusing on the period of just prior to April 2013 through to the present time, it is worthy to note firstly that this is a Daily Chart.
A few points about this chart:
1. This period of time represents a similar period of BTC price spike to $280 (April 2013) and then consolidation, just as we are going through now following the early December $1240 BTC price spike.
2. As noted before NMC seems to adhere to the Lunar New Moon price spike highs, but a few of the major spike highs have occured a few days before BTC had its own spike highs.
3. The green line at the bottom represents NMC's all-time low price of 0.00127 BTC which it has hit twice.
4. The pink line represents a line connecting the spike high price on 3 January and the daily high price on 29 November for NMC. Coincidental that these are the same value? When we take this line back to April, it closely aligns with the daily high prices then as well.
5. At the bottom of the chart we need to notice the large increase in trading volume in the past 2 months. A lot more people in and hoping, and how will this affect the number of buyers we will find going forward?
6. Two purple lines are shown connecting the two NMC intra-day price spikes in April/May 2013 and Dec 13/Jan 14. Notice how they lead down to a bottoming of NMC's price in the future, particularly the most recent line to where we are right now.
7. If we do the same thing with the daily high prices (blue lines) we see that from April/May 2013 it took 7 months for NMC's price to again challenge this line in November 2013. I guess we can conclude that NMC likes to go into a prolonged consolidation period dipping even lower while BTC itself is consolidating.
8. To the right of the chart, notice how we are presently sitting above the daily Ichimoku cloud and battling to stay above local support at 0.00653. Penetrating this cloud anytime in the next day or so would not be a good thing for holders of NMC as it could well lead (like the last time) to a prolonged down period of say 6-7 months with perhaps one or two significant spikes up to recover above the then current prices.
9. The 3 red lines represent current resistance - 0.00763, 0.00822, 0.00884. There is also localized resistance at 0.00712 and 0.00745 (not shown). Right now NMC is slowly moving higher following BTC's current recovery, but not at the pace of PPC.
Conclusions:
1. From this chart, it is probably not realistic to see NMC spike as high as it did on 3 January 14.
2. If over the coming day or two we stay above the Daily Ichimoku cloud, we could ride to a moderately higher price. However, from this chart should we pass through the Ichimoku Cloud, we could well be on a track to long term lower NMC prices. The next 12-18 hours will tell us which it will be.
3. Exit point for NMC? Just my opinion, but I doubt we will see 0.00884 this time around. Given we are seeing a bit of a strengthening in the Alts at this moment, PPC particularly moving nicely again following the BTC drop and now reversal, we could well see an NMC price move back above 0.00700. From there I will be watching its movement against the Daily Ichimoku Cloud (max 18 hours from now) and then decide if this is the best time to exit only achieving a minor gain this time around, thus avoiding becoming a long term holder of NMC.
Assumptions:
BTC, now back over $770 on BTC-e will through the next 48 hours only move sideways, will not drop significantly and nor will it rise above $800 during this time.
The upcoming Chinese New Year will have little to no effect on the price of BTC, and except for the continuing slight downward trend in price towards 3 March 2013, nothing major will happen to BTC, particularly in the next few days.
Hope this visually helps in some way in deciding what to do about NMC, but I think this longer term trend needs to be a guide, particularly as BTC consolidates further on its own path towards 3 March 14.