A Look At Activision Blizzard's Stock After Company Accused Of Widespread Sexual Harassment In Lawsuit

Activision Blizzard, Inc. ATVI promotes a culture where sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination and retaliation are constant, according to a lawsuit filed this week by California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

What Happened: Details from the filing include allegations male employees, including top executives, regularly drink at work and participate in cube crawls, talk openly about women’s bodies, joke about their sexual encounters.

The lawsuit also alleges female employees, which make up about 20% of the company's workforce, are denied promotions due to the possibility they may become pregnant, discriminated against in terms of compensation, assignment and termination and kicked out of lactation rooms so male employees can have meetings.

Within the filing, it's also documented one female employee died by suicide on a company trip with her superior. The woman was subject to intense sexual harassment including an incident at a party where male employees passed around nude photos of the woman.

Numerous women have come forward to confirm the details of the filing. Activision Blizzard released a statement where the company claims to have changed its culture and it denies the woman’s death was related to the actions of its employees.

See Also: 3 Reasons Why Electronic Arts Is The Best Video Game Stock

The Activision Chart: Activision Blizzard made an all-time high of $104.53 on Feb. 16 and then fell almost 15% over the following 14 trading days. Since then, Activision Blizzard’s stock has traded in a large sideways pattern between the $89 and $99 levels, unable to make a significant break above or below.

The sideways trading pattern has allowed for the eight-day and 21-day exponential moving averages (EMAs) and the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) to catch up to the stock and all three moving averages are now within less than 2% of Activision Blizzard’s stock price.

Activision Blizzard’s stock is being supported by the 200-day simple moving average, which indicates overall sentiment in the stock is bullish. But the stock is being held down by the eight-day and 21-day EMAs, with the eight-day EMA trending below the 21-day EMA, both of which indicate shorter-term sentiment is bearish.

Bulls want to see big bullish volume push the stock up over the eight-day EMA. If Activision Blizzard can regain the level as support it has room to capture another resistance level at $92.70.

Bears want to see Activision Blizzard’s stock lose support of the 200-day SMA. If the stock was to lose the level as support the 200-day SMA could then push Activision Blizzard below support at $89.06.

ATVI Price Action: Activision Blizzard was trading down 1.3% to $89.96 at publication time.