EMA off sometimes, question about pre and post market data usage

[jkmott59]

Hi all,

some of the screening I do is based on the EMA. I'm noticing that sometimes the values are off considerably from charts that I use. I don't expect to-the-penny precision since the algorithms can be implemented differently. I'm seeing wider divergences and, in particular, sometimes the MA's of different time frames higher or lower than in charts. For example, my chart will have a 21 period higher than the 8 but the NT will have the 8 higher than the 21.

To be clear, many values are fine, its just some that are off. I wonder if its using pre and post market data. My provider is TDAmeritrade and it returns pre and post market bars on its historical fetch. My charts don't use pre and most market data in their computation.

Will the Ninja EMA use pre and post market data? If so is there a way to tell it to ignore pre and post market data?

thanks,

john

[NinjaTrader_RyanM1]

Hi John,

EMAs will "carry" their historical values forward in time, so all the available historical data impacts the final value. Its calculation should be fairly standardized, but your data set could be completely different and then you'd get different results.

If your goal is to evaluate EMA values from multiple platforms, the first step would be line up your data sets as 100% identical- how much data, what trading hours, the same source, etc. In NinjaTrader, the trading hours for intraday charts are set by the session template selected. For daily charts, the trading hours are set by the data provider you're using.

[jkmott59]

Thank you, that made a big difference. I created a new session template with just the hours I want and refetched the data and its much better.

john

[NinjaTrader_RyanM1]

Thanks for following up John. Glad to hear you're getting the results you expect.