EMA vs. MA(SMA)

[Wind_FURY]

OP, if you are an active day-trader who use shorter time frames, EMA might be better because it is weighted more towards recent price data, but for longer time frames, like weekly charts, I believe it doesn't actually matter anymore. I personally use SMA for my weekly chart.

[tbterryboy]

When you are trading, specifically trading daily, using as many indicators as possible could both help you but also confuse you at the same time. It would sometimes show the same thing, which makes you believe that you are looking at the right thing, but sometimes will show vastly different things in which case you would have to realize there must be something wrong with it.

All in all, I would say that it is really not that difficult to use EMA, so I would go with that if I had to pick one of these, I wouldn't be 100% certain and sure about my decision and think it is guaranteed success, but it certainly is fairly easier to learn how to use EMA than any other indicator.

[elisabetheva]

if we look at the outline of the two, it just depends on what we need and may match what we want.

- EMA will catch the trend early. The earlier you catch a trend signal, the longer you follow the trend and the greater the profit opportunity. but it will always happen that the weakness of EMA is the possibility of being deceived by signals during periods of consolidation. EMA responds to prices very quickly, so it could happen that you think a trend is forming, but in reality it could just be a price spike. This would be a case of too soon an indicator for your own good.

- SMA will operate well when looking at the price for the long term, because it can give a picture of the overall trend.
Even though SMA is slow to respond to price action, it will avoid false signals.
The downside of the SMA is that it may delay the trend projection for too long and you may miss the best entry points.

Once again, look for the one that is more suitable for what you want.

*) taken from several news sources

[crwth]

I mainly use EMAs and not MAs. The EMA is fairer and averaged compared to regular MAs. It's more biased when it's just MA, and EMA would make it closer to each other (if you are using two moving averages, whether exponential or not).

The critical value of the MAs that you will use should be that there's a slow one and a fast one. Like 9 and 20. It would be calculated, and it would depend on how you interpret the graph's current setup.

There's nothing and no indication of whether you would use EMA for BTC and another for alts. It gives the same purpose so that it wouldn't be much different.