The Moving Average - Done Right
Discover how to supercharge the simple moving average in your analysis
Ubiquity != Accuracy
The above statement is apt to describe the humble moving average and the common use of it as an indicator by technical analysts of financial markets across the world. However, in the vast majority of cases (and certainly by a brief look at some charts on TA twitter), it is being used almost entirely incorrectly! This is also compounded by the fact many indicators employed by chartists to form trading algorithms or signals use moving averages incorrectly in their own composition.
Two such examples are the relative strength index (RSI) and the moving average convergence divergence (MACD).
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The Inescapable Digital Filter Lag
To understand why moving averages are being plotted incorrectly in most cases we need to understand what a moving average actually is. It is a data smoother, or, in signal processing parlance, a low pas…