February 20, 2026. So, you wake up, check the screen, and TOTAL2, that big chunk of crypto outside Bitcoin, it's up. It’s showing a gain of 1.141%. You see that number and a tiny flicker of hope sparks. Maybe, just maybe, this brutal market is turning. That little jump feels good after everything. Right?
Wrong. And I mean, absolutely, totally, gut-wrenchingly wrong if you let that little bump lull you. Been there, done that, lost capital to it. Fxpricing Blog isn't about sugarcoating. It's about looking at the raw numbers and not letting some short-term green blind you.
The Noise and the Signal
The price for Crypto Total Market Cap Excluding BTC, $ hit 948,849,809,173 today. Nice, sure. Above its open of 938,149,393,122. But here’s the kicker, the one piece of data you just cannot ignore: the primary signal for TOTAL2 right now is a crystal-clear SELL. And get this: the confidence? High. The overall trend? Strong. That's not me hedging. That's the system screaming.
Yeah, I hear the whispers, too. "But look at the oscillators!" And you'd be right to point them out. MACD, for instance, it's flashing Buy. Same with RSI, sitting there at 37.5195, also a Buy. Even Parabolic SAR, usually a decent indicator for trend reversal, is shouting Strong Buy at 906,191,253,271.37. It's a proper mess of conflicting messages, isn't it?
You see this kind of divergence, and your gut, if you're new to this, tells you to lean into the buys. More often than not, that gut feeling is wrong. It's the market's way of throwing a tiny bone, creating just enough positive noise to draw in the hopeful, the impatient, the ones who aren't looking at the bigger, uglier picture. This whole thing smells like a temporary blip, not a reversal.
The Moving Averages Tell a Different Story
Forget the day's tiny percentage gain for a second. We gotta look at the big boys, the real trend setters. The moving averages. And these aren't just flashing red; they're sounding off alarm bells that echo through the canyons of bad decisions. The EMA 200, that’s your long-term health check, right? It’s sitting way up there at 1,245,127,395,180.9, a Strong Sell signal. We're nowhere near that.
And what about the SMA 25? Another Strong Sell. It's at 1,001,561,861,379.4. So, TOTAL2’s current valuation, that 948 billion something, it's significantly below both of those key levels. The SMA 10 is neutral, fine. But when your major, long-term averages are screaming "get out," that day's small uptick is just.. noise. It's just a little bit of green in a sea of red. Don't fall for it. Check out more live crypto market data here.
And then there’s the performance over the last six months. Brace yourself. -42.3996%. Forty-two percent gone. In six months. That's not a market building a base. That’s a market bleeding out. The All-Time Low for TOTAL2, by the way, was 3,946,862.18. We're nowhere near that, thank goodness, but let's not pretend this current spot is some kind of bedrock of stability. It's still volatile. High volatility, in fact, with an ATR% of 4.8649. Swings are big. Painful, often.
Support, Resistance, and the Real Walls
So, where are we really in this mess? The Camarilla pivot points offer some perspective, at least on the intraday stuff. Today's price managed to poke its head above R1 at 940,481,174,716.23. Looks like a tiny win, right? But what does that really mean when the big resistance, the EMA 200 and SMA 25, are hundreds of billions higher? Not much, is the short answer. It’s like climbing over a curb when you're still miles from the mountain.
Bollinger Bands put our position at 32.58%. Squeeze is normal. Volatility, as I just mentioned, high. Normal squeeze, high volatility, and a position low in the bands tells me there's still a lot of room to move down, despite the oscillators trying to paint a pretty picture. We're not exactly bursting out of a contraction to the upside, even with the intraday pivot break. And you see a lot of these smaller crypto assets following Bitcoin, often with more exaggeration. Maybe something to watch over here for comparison.
The core signal. The thing the system is absolutely confident about, despite the mixed bag from the oscillators. It’s a SELL. This isn't just a recommendation. It's a statement. And when the longer-term moving averages back that up with Strong Sell warnings, it’s a siren. If I learned anything expensive in this market, it’s to listen to those sirens. Ignoring them always ends up hurting.
A Hard Lesson Learned
I’ve been burned before, too many times to count, trying to catch a falling knife on the back of some bullish oscillator signals when the overall trend was screaming bear. You see that +1.141% and think, "finally." Then the rug gets pulled. Again. Just last year, I watched a similar scenario play out with some obscure altcoin, a pair you’d find on some trading platform. It was showing a positive tick, RSI climbing, even a hopeful MACD crossover, yet the larger market cap signals, the EMA 200… they were all red flags. I got greedy.
That cost me. A significant amount of capital, gone. Just because I wanted to believe the short-term noise more than the overarching trend. Don't be me. Don't be that guy. This TOTAL2 chart, right now, February 20, 2026, it's setting up for something similar. The overall system signal is Sell. High confidence. Strong trend. That’s the data point I'm clinging to. That's the one that keeps me from chasing this small gain and losing my shirt. And always keep an eye on how these pairs interact, the smaller cap ones against each other, maybe some crypto trading pairs for context.
So, yeah, TOTAL2 had a decent morning. But don't let it fool you. The core numbers, the ones that matter for bigger moves, they are still pointing down. Hard. This isn't a buy opportunity; it's a warning. It’s a moment to sit tight, watch for real reversal patterns, something beyond a tiny percentage change. What I'm watching for next? A decisive break above that SMA 25, or even better, the EMA 200, sustained for days, not just an hourly candle. Until then, this short-term bullish price action is just
