Stock Looks Set To Break Out of Long Downtrend
Contributed Opinion

1. Beeline Loans. has a consulting relationship with Street Smart an affiliate of Streetwise Reports. Street Smart Clients pay a monthly consulting fee between US$8,000 and US$20,000.
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Ordinarily, we would not be interested in a stock like this, but Eastside Distilling Inc. (EAST:NASDAQ) is not what its current name implies. Whilst it is still in the distilling business, it has recently broadened its horizons greatly by merging with Beeline Loans, a pioneering mortgage technology company that operates an end-to-end, all-digital, AI-enhanced platform for homeowners and property investors.

Details of the merger may be read in the news release on September 4: Eastside Distilling, Inc. to Merge with Beeline Financial Holdings Inc. The merger was announced as completed on October 10. This strategic partnership positions Eastside as a leader in the digital mortgage services space while continuing to grow its legacy craft spirits business. This development and the way the stock is shaping up on the charts are the reasons that we are looking at it now. A $0.4 million financing announced on September 5 was announced closed the next day, having been taken up by a single institutional investor, which is viewed as a positive sign.

Without going into much detail, here are some comments lifted from recent news releases on the implications of this merger.

"Mortgage origination has yet to fully experience the dynamic and exciting transformation seen in other financial services sectors," said Nick Liuzza, co-founder and CEO of Beeline. "Our disruptive, cloud-based, go-to-market strategy targets Millennials and Gen Z borrowers.

The combined company will have the scale necessary to leverage the investment in a public company structure while providing growth capital to each business.

"The cost to generate a mortgage can be as high as $13,000 while taking 30 to 45 days to close, and that's not fair to the borrower," stated Nick Liuzza, Co-founder and CEO of Beeline.

"It Is often a deeply frustrating process for home buyers seeking a mortgage," added Liuzza. "We have built a front-end platform with proprietary AI to decrease turn times and lower costs. We now want to focus our efforts on the back end of the process."

Turning now to the charts, we will start on this occasion with the 6-month chart, which shows the main technical reasons for liking the stock here. The main one is that it is at the point of breaking out of the fine Cup & Handle base, which is shown to have an embedded Double Bottom within it, the two lows of last September and November.

Unfortunately, due to the massive one-day trade that occurred early in September, which looks like a "cross trade" that has had the effect of "squashing all subsequent volume flat," we cannot make sense of either the volume pattern which is invisible on this chart, or volume indicators, but the good news is that we can get around this obstacle by creating another chart that excludes that massive volume day.

The 105-day chart, which excludes the huge volume up day by pushing it off the chart to the left, includes the two lows of the Double Bottom, with the 1st low being on the extreme left of the chart, and it opens up the volume pattern enabling us to see much better what has been going on.

Thus, we see that almost all of the volume since late September has been upside volume, which has driven the Accumulation line steadily higher. This is clearly bullish, especially as the buying has become more intense with passing time.

We can also see that the "Handle" of the Cup & Handle base that we looked at on the 6-month chart has taken the form of a bullish Rising Triangle, and with it starting to close up the price is already trying to break out of it to the upside on good volume and fortunately, since it hasn't succeeded yet, at the time of writing, we still have a good entry point.

Lastly, and more for historical interest than anything, we will take a quick look at a long-term 5-year log chart, bearing in mind that this is now of little relevance given that the company has recently changed so dramatically as a result of its merger with Beeline. This chart shows a catastrophic decline in recent years — if you look at this on a normal arithmetic chart, it looks like it has dropped through the floor.

Beyond this observation and perhaps making the comment that it would be nice to see the stock break out of this long downtrend, which looks set to happen soon, it should be emphasized that as the company is a very different entity following the merger with Beeline, this chart is irrelevant so the fact that it hasn't broken out of the downtrend yet is viewed as unimportant and we should look to the shorter-term charts above for guidance as to what to expect.

Eastside Distilling website

Eastside Distilling Inc. (EAST:NASDAQ) closed for trading at US$0.8299 on January 10, 2025.