backtest will tell you ma is lagging method but if you insist here is how one trader uses it http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50736&perpage=6&pagenumber=12
Hey traderdragon2, At this point, I think you are right. As a still green backtester, the first things I did, like many I suppose, was test every thing I could think of with ma's. Crossing, price under then over, distance from ma's, slopes, etc. I use all the stocks in various indexes and go from 100 to 4000 days. Got thousands of trades and just couldn't find anything that worked with ma's. I was wondering if/how traders might use a ma or a combination of ma's for detecting trend.
www.maths.tcd.ie/~elliottp/Trend1.pdf Citigroup article on foreign currency trading using moving averages.