What basic two things am I misunderstanding about moving averages?

Another way to look at moving averages is from a digital signals processing (DSP) standpoint. MAs are lowpass filters. John Ehlers is the man when it comes to DSP in trading. Look up his two and three pole supersmoothers, and his roofing filter.

Did Ehlers make money in the market or he is just selling books? Do you know if there are any DSP engineers that made lots of money in the markets?
 
Did Ehlers make money in the market or he is just selling books? Do you know if there are any DSP engineers that made lots of money in the markets?
Neither he nor anyone else who admits to primarily using DSP for technical analysis have disclosed their records. Ehlers is very open about his methods and approaches trading with a solid science and engineering mind.

Of course that doesn't mean DSP, or TA in general, will make you or anyone else profitable.
 
You mean it only may make money to the authors of Technical Analysis indicators "with a solid science and engineering mind" but who do not disclose exhaustive analyses whether it works or not? Like a mathematician who demands the Nobel price without providing a proof for his conjectures? But then selling books and sticking it into the butt of unassuming new bees might not be the same as the Nobel price...

Of course that doesn't mean DSP, or TA in general, will make you or anyone else profitable.
 
Another way to look at moving averages is from a digital signals processing (DSP) standpoint. MAs are lowpass filters. John Ehlers is the man when it comes to DSP in trading. Look up his two and three pole supersmoothers, and his roofing filter.

KISS:)
 
I suspect this is going to be an embarrassing question/s:
First, why when I look at a shorter term chart such as just below. The current price of SPY is above the 3, 5, and 10 day SMA. But, when I switch to 5 year chart it appears to only be above the 10 day average?

Second, doing a visual inspection of charts, it looks like using a a combination of 3, 5, 10 sma averages and only being long or short when current spy price is above or below all three is a winning approach. I assume I must be naively missing something; what is that?

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5 YEAR>
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I haven't spent time looking at your charts and I think what I am about to say is no different than what Jtrades has already said, but maybe just another way of saying it, but here is how most charting software works. If your bars are say daily bars and the sma you have plotted is sma(10), it means the moving 10 day average is being plotted. If your bars are weekly (one per week), then sma(10) means the moving average being plotted is the 10 week average, and If you are plotting monthly bars, then sma(10) means that plotted average is based on the most recent 10 months, etc.. In other words the numbers in parentheses after 'sma' are relative to the time period of the chart. So if you wanted to plot a 10 day moving average on a monthly period chart where each bar represented the price change over a one month period, you would have to plot sma(.33) because 10 days is one third of a month. (assuming your software would allow it).
 
So if you wanted to plot a 10 day moving average on a monthly period chart where each bar represented the price change over a one month period, you would have to plot sma(.33) because 10 days is one third of a month. (assuming your software would allow it).

If using end-of-day data, the shortest period would be a two day cycle (0.5 Hz), which is the Nyquist frequency. Stay several octaves away from the Nyquist frequency because of noise. No shorter period than an eight day cycle (0.125 Hz). Anyhow, if desiring to use moving averages, use Ehlers Supersmoothers, which have just about the smallest lag of all lowpass filters.
 
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