Friday 30 September 2011

Guppy Multi-Moving Average (GMMA)

Found this interesting indicator today. Not too bad. Has the potential to make a great deal of profit, since it gets a person to hold longer. The idea is based on a swack load of EMA's: Fast EMA's (3,5,8,10,12 and 15) and Slow EMA's (30,35,40,45,50 and 60). Now when the Slow EMA's 'compress' (tangle together) there is no trend; when the Slow EMA's 'expand' the trend is back. When the Fast EMA's 'compress' the market is going sideways; when the Fast EMA's expand the trend is starting again.
Now, entry points occur when the Fast EMA's pass over the Slow EMA's, and both begin to 'expand' away from each other, as well as themselves (see example graph below).
Exiting comes when the Fast EMA's 'compress'.
And that's it!....

....But there is some drawbacks with this indicator:

  • The typical timeframe for this indicator is the daily charts, and from there the entry points are few in number (even less entry points if you wait for all the EMA's to cross the 200 Moving Average; described in video below).
  • When there is a possible entry point I found that the price will start to go in the other direction, and the trend will die.
  • The exit points are not great since it take too long for it to realize that the trend is over and should be going in the other direction (I tried a parabolic SAR to find my exit points: wasn't too bad, but it wasn't the adrenalin inducing excitement I was hoping for). 

Check out this 3 part video on YouTube that explains the indicator a lot better than I can:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfiYfWORHGI

All-in-all, this indicator could be very useful for a long term trade, but on an intray day basis I don't think it is very useful.
There is another indicator out there that is similar to the GMMA, and that the Rainbow MMA. Again, it has the same problems as the GMMA.
I wonder what this indicator would look and act like if a Hull Moving Average, or a JMA, or a Volume-Weighted Moving Average was used instead...?
Food for thought.