MA crossovers work if you're looking to join on-going trends, you're really disciplined about cutting the frequent losers, and you are NOT trading reversals.
I find it rather curious how moving averages that mean very little or nothing somehow enable me to trade profitably, despite being stopped out of a couple of trades when unfavorable circumstances developed as I slept, and even though I’ve yet to entirely complete the process of fleshing out some of the more nuanced aspects of my forecast model. However, I won’t try to defend my position, but will simply post my results... If people want to argue with success, they are at liberty to do so. As for me, I’m just thankful my realm of possibilities has been open to more than just the familiar paths, which has freed me to not only build a vivid, innovative vision; but to also see it manifesting its reality in ever-increasing colors and dimensions so that I might one day emerge from these humble beginnings to perhaps share among and inspire others with its implications.
Note the mention of "sometimes"... In your own posted chart....prices sometimes cross back and forth across MAs (especially in sideways markets). During those times, the MA doesn't provide support or resistance.... nor convey oversold/overbought... that is, the market "passed through them like they weren't even there". That's when they mean "very little or nothing". (One day's worth of scalping profits supports your notion?)
He was. He was using 80-period and 140-period exponential moving averages of daily stock closing-prices as a method of trend-identification for the purpose of directional bias only. He was. Note that he was NOT using moving averages crossovers as a basis for trade entries. He isn't. But clearly he did well with it, as a timeframe-specific, trend-based, bias-determination method, for a while, and unlike some of the people posting here, his results (obviously) were statistically significant. You don't have a "position" to defend. What you have are the results of 13 consecutive trades, of no statistical significance whatsoever. When you have the results from 13,000 (or perhaps even just 1,300) trades, showing the same thing, then you'll have "a position to defend" (and it will be an interesting one to defend, because it will conflict with the findings of just about every independent, objective, systematic, statistically significant research-trial which has ever been published on this subject! ).
It is human nature to want the milk without the cow. The real question should be: "how do I use the MA (or insert any other TA study here) in order to correctly to take a trade entry". IMO, once you have an informed baseline of how to use an indicator correctly, it is much easier to tailor the study settings and time frames to suit your needs. John Bollinger once told me at a reception that 95% of the people using Bollinger Bands don't use them the way he designed them or intended. I tend to find a similar theme with new trader clients I take on.
%% Sounds about right; some ETFs did + do much better than than that in 2017. But like the Wall Street Journal, 100 top asset managers[by WSJ figures] forecasted in March 2017, expecting more volitility. So 52 weeks early suits me fine, i almost never read much WSJ paper before markets start. I may read IBD early ; not a prediction. Good points.
Using MA's will suck your acct. dry. Find some divergence software and learn on a demo acct. to start.
Using MA's isn't a problem. Misusing them is the problem. That and depending on a MA crossover and nothing else as an entry signal with the converse MA crossover as the exit signal. But used for the correct purpose and in the right ways, they are perhaps the simplest and most useful set of indicators available.
with due respect to John Bollinger; if the way he designed them is profitable; I bet everyone will be using it the way John like them to be
Miss. Everybody wants the milk without the cow. The proverbial ATM machine for three easy payment of $14.95. Some plug and play magic study that spits out a fortune and the user doesn’t have any need to invest time and effort. For that matter - go out and buy MatLab or S-Plus or the Trading Technologies ADL key and just stare at it waiting and hoping that it will sprout cash. There exists a population of traders who make money with those tools so by your reasoning everyone should or it’s a shit tool.