Moving Average Fundamental In Technical Analysis

Moving averages are one of the most popular tools for technical analysis. Before that, let's look what technical analysis is if you have no idea what it is. But if you have no idea what what stock is at all, you can read this post first: Stock Market 101. :)


What is Technical Analysis?

Generally, there are 2 types of stocks analysis method. The first one is called "Fundamental Analysis" where you analyze the stock based on the financial data (e.g. annual report). Few popular and useful methods that I mentioned in my previous post are

• Earning Per Share (EPS) Ratio 
• Price Per Earning (PE) Ratio

On the other hand, technical analysis doesn't look at the financial data at all. It analyzes the stock based on 2 things:

• Prices Move in Trends
• History Tends to Repeat Itself

It basically means that there are always 4 stages of stock cycle in any time frame as I mentioned in my previous post. Because of this 4 stages of stock cycle, technical analysis can make such prediction which cycles you're at and suggest whether you should buy or sell. Cool, isn't it?


What is Moving Average?

If you look at the technical analysis chart you always see this symbol MA, it basically means moving average. There are MA 10, MA 20, what do they mean? The number refers to days and it basically means 10-day and 20-day moving average respectively.  

Example: 10-day MA for APPL

Let's look at the fundamental calculation for 10-day moving average (MA 10):

First Average X    = (Sum of Day 1 until Day 10) / 10

Second Average Y = (Sum of Day 2 until Day 11) / 10

Third Average Z   = (Sum of Day 3 until Day 12) / 10

.... 

....

The first average X is at Day 10 and look back to the past for 10 days. So it basically reflects to the past 10 days average at that point. When you join the X, Y, Z together, you will get a line and this line is called 10-day Moving Average (MA 10) "trend line". So, if the line is moving upward,  it is upward trend. If the line is moving downward, it is downward trend. Simple right?

The good news is you don't need to calculate your own, most online chart (e.g. the yahoo technical analysis chart) allows you to plot the MA trend line. In general, there are 10-day, 20-day, 50-day, 100-day and 200-day moving average. It depends whether you're a short term or long term investor. For example, the larger the number (e.g. 200-day MA), it is usually used by long term investors. It also means that the longer MA will move slower than the shorter MA.


When Moving Averages Crossover...

When MA is used in pair, because of one is moving slower than another, it will have a crossover at certain point. When the fast line (shorter day MA) crosses over and above the slow line (longer day MA), it indicates a "Buy Signal" and similarly if the fast line is below the slow line, it indicates "Sell Signal".

Let's look at this example for Apple share, plotting the MA 20 versus MA 50. The MA 20 if faster line which is in green and the MA 50 is slower line in red.

• At crossover 1, MA 20 is below MA 50. Sell indicator, it tells you to sell!
• At crossover 2, MA 20 is above MA 50. Buy indicator, it tells you to buy!
• At crossover 3, Sell indicator...
• At crossover 4, Buy indicator...

You will need to look at which combinations of MA provide meaningful information to you. Basically you need to try and error for each stock because it works for one stock, it may not work for another stock.


Summary

I hope this is useful for you to understand the fundamental of technical analysis. I'm not sure how practical is this as I'm pretty new to this but I at least refer to technical analysis indicator for selling my company stock but sometimes I do not wait for the crossover to sell because I have already made enough money out of it. Sometimes, we shouldn't be too greedy especially in stock investment. :)

Some fundamental stock experts do not keen at all on technical analysis but in my opinion, I think we should look at both. Feel free to share your comment here if you have experiences on using technical analysis to make your decision in your stock investment! Do you find it useful?

[Update: April 21 2014]: Another very useful technical analysis tool that you can use is "Support & Resistance", you can find more about it here: How to Use Support & Resistance in Stock Investing?. 

Useless Features Review on Samsung Galaxy S3

This is not really a personal finance blog post but more on a product review which I haven't done for quite some time. I'm going to share with you my review (from user and practical perspective) on the Samsung Galaxy S3 that I bought lately. You may continue to read on you're interested...

Somehow not many people talk about  the negative side of this, so I will just start with this useless features review on Samsung Galaxy S3. Of course, this is merely from my perspective.

Useless Features

•  S Voice is completely useless. It seems cool, but I don't think it is effective for me to instruct my phone by voice as compare to conventional way. I can do it a lot more faster than not using the voice. Also, it is not practical in most of the time.

• Pre-installed softwares cannot be uninstalled and the only thing you can do is to disable them so that they won't run in startup. For example ChatON is a useless software by Samsung where now everyone uses WhatsApp.  You can't basically uninstalled them unless you root your device.

• Motion activation  is another cool but useless or less practical feature in my opinion. Well, the most useful motion feature is probably the "Turn over to mute/pause". if you really want to use it. The rest motion features are merely for showing off purpose.

• Multiple burst shot is cool but I think if you can capture with single shot, the picture quality is better. Unless, you really want to capture a keep moving object, then probaly the burst mode is good.

• Face detection to unlock screen is yet another cool but useless feature. It makes me unlock the screen slower. Guess it is another feature to show off!

What are the useful features? All the features that you can find out from web except with those that I mentioned above are useful enough. For example, the "Smart Stay" feature is pretty cool and also useful. It is very practical too!


Buy or Not Buy?

Overall, it is a good buy for me because it helps my life getting effective. Perhaps I have been outdated for too long with my windows mobile in HTC but if you really have cost concern, you should consider buying low-end Samsung smart phone which I think it serves an almost similar features. Good luck!

Malaysia is the most Sluggish Country in Southeast Asia

I can't help myself to blog about this here when I saw this article shared from a  facebook's friend which stated that Malaysia is the most sluggish country in Southeast Asia, ranked 10th "laziest" nation in the world. The original article is here.

In summary, here is the laziest country scoring based on the survey from "The Lacent"(i.e. TheLancet.com). where the highest the percentage is , the laziest the country is. I'm not sure how they do the survey but it seems like you need to pay for it to get the data.


Laziest Country Scoring

South-east Asia
Malaysia - 61.4% (ranked 10th in the world)
Indonesia -29.8%
Philippines - 23.7%
Thailand - 19.2%
Vietnam - 15.3%
Myanmar -12.7%
Cambodia - 11.2%

Top 3 in the World
Malta - 71.9%
Swaziland - 69.0%
Saudi Arabia - 68.8%


Rest of the Countries
China - 31.0 %
India - 15.6 %



Do you believe it?

The next question is do you believe it? Is Malaysia really that bad? The biggest slacker in South-East Asia? Ranked number 10th in the world? Can you believe it? My first impression was I tried to deny it but after some thoughts, I tend to agree with the survey based on my daily observation in my surroundings. But I could be wrong.

Here are what I observe

• University standard is getting lower and lower. For example, a basic fundamental of digital logic question, most graduated electrical or electronic student cannot answer that. What's going on? Forgot to tell you, some of them are first class student too.

• Younger generation cannot take pressure. They like to take short cut (e.g. expecting high increment with minimum effort). When they face challenge, they look for the way out. Is it Generation Y culture? or is it Malaysia problem?

• Top performer in a company is not really a top performer in a company. I have seen many cases in my company that the top performer is not because they're super good, it is because the rest are too worst! Also, can't find any better than them in the market too.

• Have a chance to talk to a first class oversea student from Vietnam who study in Malaysia. Her CGPA is 4.0 flat so I curious and  I asked how she did that. She just told me surprisingly Malaysia education standard is very low and students are very lazy, that's why relatively I'm the best. How true? But the above survey seems justify this.

• Older generation is also getting affected by the laziness culture. Take me as an example, I started to getting to slack more already as compared in the past. This happens to the people who are the same generation with me too. So old and new generation also lazy, what will happen next?

So, what is your take on this? How far do you believe this survey is true? What do you see in your surroundings? Do you see a similar trend that I see?