If the reason its fucked is because one car has no air in the tires while the other does, I'd say that is a very big improvement.
No matter one's methodology, the best any of can have is an edge. As a day trader, the 20 ema helps me to define my edge. I can't tell the future, no one can but I do know given defined technical conditions what is more likely to happen. If someone has a better mouse trap or are better traders then kudo's to them. I applaud success but it took a long time of first trying nearly every indicator, MA combination, bands, wave structure, Gann square-outs, custom fib number tick charts etc etc until I finally began to study and understand price behavior and market cycle that the fog lifted. I now use nothing but price candles, my 20 ema which I don't need but like and I draw retrace and multiple risk reward grids for stops and targets as needed. There is nothing esoteric about what I do, I trade flags of their various permutations and retrace zones...that's it but get plenty of signals a week. A trader needs to have and understand his or her edge, a trade plan to exploit that edge and either have or develop the necessary disciplines to trade it with the consistently required.
I don't disagree about an edge, but why a MA? Can't you think of something different? You have a lazy brain! Your brain is wired to the flock of sheep.
I'm working against my cause, if too many of you decide to think harder, it becomes dangerous for me.
Each bar of my time-based charts has 5 input variables... Open, High, Low, Close, and Volume. As a bar is forming, the Close input stands for the last Executed price. From these 5 inputs, derivatives for spread, distance, and velocity are produced. Also, visually, multiple bars form regularly repeated geometric shapes and formations. The 5 inputs are available to nearly all market participants. No worries Mick... I'm not a deep thinker.
. Am a big admirer of Ehlers' body of work too. The ThinkOrSwim platform I use has 9 of his indicators built in for use. I've also added 5 others to the list that I picked up elsewhere, including the zerolag MA you mentioned. Being who I am, I immediately re-coded it to show different colors for up and down slopes and played around with it in combination with different strategy ideas for a while. I didn't find an edge, mostly because it's a bit too zigzaggy, even after making the best modifications I could to the input parameters. It's a nice concept, though. My favorite script he made is the Ehlers Stochastic... with a few adjustments it's a good indicator of extreme highs and lows and works well in conjunction with medium-term MAs.
After many years of trying to work with trend following and moving averages of different flavors, I have moved on (profitably) to cycles. I personally like Ehlers' pink noise model of the market.