How to Easily Code a Moving Average Cross Trading Strategy

Enhancing Your Understanding of Moving Average Crosses

Sofien Kaabar, CFA
5 min readFeb 27, 2024

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Moving averages are a way to smooth out price data over a certain period of time, showing the average price of an asset over that time frame. They’re often used in technical analysis to identify trends and potential reversal points in the market. This article shows how to code the cross technique to facilitate the detection of trading signals.

A Gentle Introduction to Moving Averages

Imagine you have a stock’s price data for the past 50 days. You can calculate a 50-day moving average by taking the average of the stock’s closing prices over those 50 days. Each day, you add the latest closing price to the calculation and drop off the oldest one, so the moving average moves along with the price.

Now, why are they useful? Well, they help traders smooth out short-term fluctuations in price, making it easier to see the overall trend. If the current price is above the moving average, it suggests that the asset is in an uptrend, while if it’s below, it suggests a downtrend.

Traders often look for crosses as signals of potential changes in trend. For example, if the market surpasses its moving average, it may be a bullish signal and a…

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