As a trader, one of the most important things you can do is to develop a moving average (MA) trading strategy. A moving average is simply the average price of a stock or other asset over a given period of time. By looking at the moving average, you can get a sense of the overall trend of the market and make decisions accordingly. Above all, remember that an SMA indicator is simply a helpful tool and is certainly not infallible. While it may appear predictive, an SMA is always based on historical data and simply shows the average price over a specific period.

While most often used in forex trading as a momentum indicator, the MACD can also be used to indicate market direction and trend. The Simple Moving Average (SMA) is a technical analysis tool that is used to identify the average price of a currency pair over a specific period of time. The SMA is calculated by adding up the closing prices of the currency pair for a specific number of periods and then dividing the total by the number of periods.

• The creation of the moving average ribbon was founded on the belief that more is better when it comes to plotting moving averages on a chart.
• It is commonly used as a baseline for other technical indicators, such as the Relative Strength Index (RSI), Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD), and Bollinger Bands.
• This involves using MA lines, either the platform-provided indicator or plotting them manually, on a market over a predefined period of time.
• The period is the number of bars or candles used to calculate the average price.

Some investors speculate this could be an upward-sloping accumulation that leads to a $40,000 rally. The author has not received compensation for writing this article, other than from FXStreet. Discover the range of markets you can trade on – and learn how they work – with IG Academy’s online course. A stop or stop loss will close your position automatically if the market moves against you by a certain amount. Once you’ve clicked ‘buy’ or ‘sell’, it’s time to choose your deal size.

Day 8: 1.2350

In contrast, a long-term investor may use the 200-day SMA to identify the long-term trend. It can be applied to all financial markets, such as shares, currencies, indices and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The simple moving average (SMA) is a popular technical analysis tool. Used mainly to identify trends, it is one of the most commonly used indicators across all financial markets. The SMA works by smoothing out past price data and is generally seen as a lagging indicator​.

• A death cross is identified when a security’s short-term SMA crosses below its long-term SMA.
• It just reflects an earlier price movement trend and does not mean it can predict prices.
• Once you’ve clicked ‘buy’ or ‘sell’, it’s time to choose your deal size.
• On the one-minute chart below, the MA length is 20 and the envelopes are 0.05%.
• The simplest use of an SMA in technical analysis is using it to quickly determine if an asset is in an uptrend or downtrend.

Here is an example of how moving averages smooth out the price action. Another way to use SMAs is by watching for price action around the SMA itself. If prices are consistently bouncing off the SMA, it could be an indication that it is acting as support or resistance.

Simple Moving Average (SMA) Explanation & Trading Strategies

The 200-day SMA is a very popular technical indicator because it is easy to understand. A simple moving average indicator can be very useful and provide any type of trader with important buy and sell signals. However, as with any technical indicator, there are disadvantages to using a simple moving average.

Simple moving average

Because SMA smoothes out price fluctuations direction shows asset price trends. Using this feature of SMAs you can go long when short term SMA crosses above long term SMA and vice versa you can go short when short term SMA crosses below long term SMA. For this study, we are sma in forex using the golden cross and death cross strategies, which consists of the 50-period and 200-period simple moving averages. For those of you not familiar with these strategies, the goal is to buy when the 50-period crosses above the 200-period and sell when it crosses below.

Simple Moving Average vs. Exponential Moving Average

Forex traders should test out different percentages, time intervals, and currency pairs to understand how they can best employ an envelope strategy. It is most common to see envelopes over 10- to 100-day periods and using “bands” that have a distance from the moving average of between 1-10% for daily charts. The SMA is just the average price over the whole time period you want to factor in for that market (for example, 100 days).

Finally, consider an asset’s past performance on the 50-period SMA. It becomes evident that the line is much smoother, with a more significant lag behind the price. In the next lesson, we will show you what we mean, and also introduce you to another type of moving average to avoid this problem. We might think that a new currency trend may be developing but in reality, nothing changed. The SMAs in this chart show you the overall sentiment of the market at this point in time. As you can see, the EMA (red line) hugs the price action as the stock sells off.

Both disadvantages deal with the mental aspect of trading, which is where most traders struggle. If you get anything out of this article, do not make the same mistake I did with years of worthless analysis. You will make some traction, but it’s a far better use of your time to zone in on yourself and how you perceive the market.

For example, this is how you would calculate the simple moving average of a security with the following closing prices over a 15-day period. A simple moving average (SMA) calculates the average of a selected range of prices, usually closing prices, by the number of periods in that range. While the SMA can be a helpful tool, it is important to keep in mind that it has its limitations.

SMA = (Sum of Closing Prices for N Periods) / N

For example, if you are using a 20-period SMA, you would add up the closing prices of the currency pair for the last 20 periods and then divide that total by 20. Moving averages are fundamental to many technical analysis strategies, but successful traders use a combination of techniques. One advantage of the simple moving average is that the tool can be used for both technical and fundamental analysis​. While the two styles are very different, the simple moving average can be used to complement both. For example, a short-term trader that trades using technical analysis may be interested in finding out whether a security is trending up or down over a 10-day period.