The Most Widely Used Technical Indicator In The World & Why It Matters So Much!

While there are a number of technical indicators that are useful to me and have their own strengths, (which tell me what is likely to happen concerning a stock, ETF or index)…if you told me I could only have ONE technical indicator, this would be it: the 200-period simple moving average  https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sma.asp

Why? It’s the most widely watched and used indicator in all of technical analysis. Yet there are several things that this one indicator tells us, all at the same time.

The main way that people know to use this moving average is to simply detect the long-term trend direction. While prices will gyrate up and down, the moving average “smooths out” this activity and it helps you to better see if prices are trending higher or lower overall. The good news is that you don’t have to be a skilled technician/chartist, like you would to have to draw trend lines properly.