Moving Average

A moving average is an indicator that averages an instrument’s price over the last N periods and plots the result as a line that updates each bar, smoothing out short-term noise to reveal the underlying trend. The simple moving average (SMA) weights every period equally; longer lengths are smoother and slower, shorter lengths are faster and noisier.

Moving averages are used as trend filters (price above a rising average is an uptrend), as dynamic support and resistance, and as crossover signals — a fast average crossing a slow one is the basis of the golden cross and death cross. They are lagging by construction: because each value depends on past prices, the line turns after price does, which is the price paid for smoothing.

That lag is why moving-average systems struggle in choppy, ranging markets, generating whipsaw signals that bleed fees. In Secuora’s published research at /strategy, a 50/200 EMA golden-cross baseline on BTC lost roughly 20% over twelve months after commissions — the smoothing was real, the edge was not.