- Take two moving averages of the close, one fast and one slow.
- When the fast crosses above the slow, buy at that bar's close.
- When it crosses back below, close the trade — and, if you are trading both sides, go short.
- Flat at the end of the session. One position at a time.
- Our choices, not anyone's rule — nobody owns this strategy, so these had to be picked: flat at the end of the session; 5-minute bars; New York hours (9:30–16:00) for gold too; a setting needs at least 60 trades to be scored. The averages runs on one continuous chart, as on a trading screen — it does not restart each morning.
- Costs are real: $3.00 a round turn on Nasdaq micros, $25.00 on gold.
- Every average uses closes up to and including the current bar. Nothing looks ahead.
| trades | win | a trade | random, held as long | the rule is worth | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasdaq · the famous EMA 9/21 | 1,661 | 35.0% | −$1.74 | −$0.10 | — |
| Nasdaq · best of 60 (SMA 9/100 long) | 671 | — | $9.17 | $1.96 | $7.21 |
| Gold · best of 60 (SMA 13/100 long) | 808 | — | $26.70 | −$38.48 | $65.17 |
The famous pair loses money. EMA 9/21, long only, is −$1.74 a trade over 1,661 trades. It is the default on most platforms and the one nearly every day-trading course teaches.
Every setting, not the one that suits us. The table below changes with the market and the side rule you have selected. 22 of 60 made money on Nasdaq; 11 of 60 did on gold.
No pattern that holds on both markets. Neither average type wins everywhere: the exponential does a little better on Nasdaq, the simple one on gold. The best settings on both are the wide, slow pairs — and even they sit far from the bar once you count how many settings were tried.
Everything else worth saying
The control is the whole test. A long-only trend rule on a market that rose for four years will make money without doing anything clever. So each setting is measured against entering at a random bar and holding for the same number of bars, with the same costs and the same side rule. If the crossing cannot beat that, it is measuring the market, not the signal.
The bar is set for the whole search, not each cell. Trying 120 settings and keeping the best is how noise gets published, so the threshold is divided by the number of settings tried. Nothing here comes close to it either way.
Costs are why the fast pairs bleed. The 5/21 pair on Nasdaq fires thousands of times. At $3.00 a round turn, a rule needs to be right by more than the commission before it is worth anything, and this one is not.
What this test does not do
We tested the crossover as it is taught — cross up, buy; cross back, out. That is the rule beginners are given.
- No filter, no context. Most people who use this add something: only trade with the higher-timeframe trend, only in certain hours, only with a stop. Any of those could change the result, and none of them are part of the rule as taught.
- No stop or target. The trade runs until the opposite cross or the session end, which is how the rule is usually described.
- Intraday, five-minute bars. The 50/200 daily golden cross is the other famous version. Four years of data gives too few of those crosses to test, so it is not covered here.
- Two markets. More would make the result stronger.
- The replay is a sample. Every number is scored over all 1,047 Nasdaq and 1,663 gold sessions; the chart ships the most recent 1047 of each so the page stays light.
If you use a pair that is not in the grid, or a filter you think matters, say so and we will test it the same way and publish it.
Nobody owns this one. It is on every platform by default and in every beginner course, which is exactly why it was worth checking.