Why Moving Averages Change When Chart Timeframes Change

Summary

The document explains why a simple moving average or exponential moving average may show a different current value when a chart’s timeframe changes. Many charting platforms calculate the indicator from closing prices at the displayed frequency. A daily chart therefore uses daily closes, while a weekly or intraday chart uses closes from those respective bars. Changing the chart timeframe changes the observations entering the calculation, so the resulting average changes as well.

Some platforms may let users set the timeframe used for the indicator independently of the chart. That can allow, for example, a daily moving average to appear on an intraday chart. The discussion is a general explanation of charting behavior rather than a technical comparison of SMA and EMA formulas. It does not identify the exact settings or implementation in the questioner’s platform, so users should check the indicator’s data frequency and configuration when values differ across views.

Key ideas

• Moving averages are often calculated from closing prices at the chart’s displayed frequency.
• Changing chart frequency changes the price observations used by the indicator.
• An indicator’s calculation timeframe may be configurable separately from the chart timeframe.
• The explanation describes common platform behavior but does not verify a particular platform’s settings.

Tags

# Why does the SMA and EMA appear to be relative to the timeframe?


# Why does the SMA and EMA appear to be relative to the timeframe?












Why does the value of the SMA and EMA for the current time appear to change when I change my timescale. I'm using ActiveTrader by Fidelity, but I'm hoping there's an general phenomenon so that someone here will know what's going on.

## Answer by Louis Marascio (score 5, accepted)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/9491

The moving average in your platform is most likely based on closing prices of whatever time frame you're visualizing. Daily data would using daily closing prices; weekly data would use weekly closing prices; 5 minute data would use 5 minute closing prices, etc. Therefore, as you change time frame the data used to calculate the moving average changes.

Your platform may allow you to parameterize the moving average allowing you to tell it which time frame to base the calculation on. This way, when you're looking at a 5 minute chart you can still see the 50 day moving average, etc.

## Answer by Mike (score 0)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/71378

Looks like it's because of the close timeframe as was stated above. I found this stack wondering the same thing. Check out this website:

https://www.barchart.com/forex/quotes/%5EXAUUSD/interactive-chart

You'll see that the "frequency" changes depending on the timeframe but you can then change it back to daily, weekly, monthly.

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.