200 day moving average

JeffSinNHUSA

Does the 200 day moving average typically include 200 days of activity or 200 closes of activity? IE - Are Saturday and Sundays included in those 200 days?

markd

Hi @JeffSinNHUSA for any average of anything, the number in the parameter, e.g. sma(200, close) is the number of bars, whether the bar represents a full trading session, or a week, or month, or hour or ten minutes, etc. So it would not include calendar days when there is no trading, like Saturdays (except on very old charts), Sundays and holidays.

For scans, you can specify day, week or month - so

sma(20, close) - this is daily, which is the default, so you don't have to say "daily"

weekly sma(20, weekly close) - is weekly

monthly sma(20, monthly close) - is monthly

In scans, you can't specify a time period less than daily, like hourly or ten minutes, etc. so, this isn't legal:

hourly sma(20, hourly close)

You can put MAs for any supported time period on your chart styles (see what's available in the drop down), however. But, you can't mix time frames on a chart - for instance, you can't put a daily sma on a weekly chart, or vice versa. You can approximate them however - for instance, a 40 week moving average is similar to a 200 day average (40 weeks x5 days=200 days).

Here is a link to the chart school article on MAs.

stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school:technical_indicators:moving_averages

JeffSinNHUSA

Thank you!