Make Winning Trades with MACD

Learn how to use MACD to generate reliable buy-sell signals, and get a web-connected spreadsheet to automatically plot technical trading charts from a stock ticker.

In the previous article in this series, we learned how to calculate and plot MACD in Excel.

Read on to discover how traders know when to buy and sell using MACD as a critical part of their technical arsenal.

You can also download a bonus Excel tool to download historical stock prices and automatically plot MACD, RSI, EMA and ATR – the link is at the bottom of this article.

MACD is constructed from the following elements.

• a 12-day exponential moving average of the stock price,
• a 26-day exponential moving average of the stock price,
• the MACD line, which is the 12 day moving average minus the 26 day moving average,
• and a 9-day moving average of the MACD, also known as the signal.

You can learn how to calculate these quantities in Excel here.

Traders sometimes alter the times for the moving averages to s, but 12-26-9 are typical.

A histogram (or more correctly a bar-chart) is the MACD line minus the signal line; this signals whether the MACD is greater or smaller than the signal line.

An MACD chart usually consists of the MACD, signal and histogram. This is a typical example.

This type of chart is easy to automatically generate from a ticker symbol with the spreadsheet available at the bottom of this article.

The 12- and 26-day moving averages follow the trend of the stock price.

• In a rapidly-moving market the, 12-day EMA dips or rises more steeply than the 26-day EMA.
• In a steady market, the difference between the two, the MACD, will oscillate in a range

The MACD is hence a momentum-oscillator that peaks and troughs over time.

Trading the Crossover

MACD is greater than zero if the 12-day EMA is larger than the 26-day EMA. If MACD grows larger and larger, upside momentum is increasing. If the MACD is negative, and falling further, downside momentum is increasing.

At its simplest level, traders watch for crossovers as the MACD and signal lines develop

• A buy signal is generated when the MACD rises above the signal (aka going long),
• and a sell signal is generated when the MACD falls bellow the signal (aka going short).

If the MACD and signal line cross-over

• above zero, that indicates potentially bullish market behavior
• below zero, that indicates potentially rather more bearish sentiments

MACD, is unbounded; this means that you can’t necessarily judge whether a stock is overbought or oversold with MACD. However, over a longer-term, you may notice that MACD peaks at around the same level for many stocks; this means that as the MACD reaches a previous high, sentiment may soon change.

The MACD-signal crossover will potentially produce many trading signals; some of these may not always be the right time to change your market position. Hence traders usually interpret MACD in the context of other technical indicators, including the relative strength index and average true range.

Trading Divergence in the Histogram

The MACD histogram isn’t a “histogram” in the statistical sense of the word. It’s simply a bar chart of the MACD minus the signal line. The bars of the histogram grow progressively larger as the price accelerates, and vice-versa.

The histogram, in essence, measures the strength of the price velocity, or momentum.

For example, consider this chart of the MACD and histogram of Exxon Mobile (ticker: XOM) for the year to date. It was generated with the free technical charting spreadsheet available at the bottom of this article, simply by entering a ticker symbol, two dates and clicking a button.

Prices reach a peak in both May and July, as marked on the chart. The peak in July is higher than the earlier peak. However, the histogram fails to break its earlier peak in July.

In essence, prices start to diverge from the histogram. This is known as divergence and signposts weakness in price movement, and a possible reversal. Prices, accordingly, fall steeply in August.

Unfortunately, this signal can often be a false-positive; hence divergence is usually interpreted with signals from other indicators.

Using MACD and RSI to To Generate Buy-Sell Signals

Let’s use the principles discussed earlier to study a trading strategy for Exxon Mobil (ticker: XOM) for the year to date. The following plot gives the MACD, signal line, RSI (and close price) of XOM from 3^rd January 2013 to 2^nd September 2013.

As you can see MACD (in red) crosses over the signal line (in blue) on several clearly defined occasions. This gives strong buy/sell signals. A couple of observations can be made.

• The MACD/signal crossovers occur when the RSI is usually between 50 and 60
• The MACD/signal crossovers happen some time after the peaks and troughs in RSI. Eyeballing the plot gives a lag of around a week.

The crossover of the MACD and signal line at the end of July/beginning of August gives a big sell signal. This is preceded by a peak in RSI of 70 about ten days before that – that’s a sign of an overbought market.

These two indicators strongly signpost XOM’s falling price that occurs in August 2013.

Plot Technical Trading Signals in Excel – Automatically!

This Excel spreadsheet

• automatically downloads historical daily stock prices for a user-specified ticker, between two user-specified dates
• plots the MACD, RSI, ATR, 12- and 26-day exponential moving averages, and historical volatility.

Watch this video for a sneak peak of the spreadsheet.

All you do is enter the stock ticker, two dates, time windows for RSI, ATR and the volatility, and click a button. Behind the scenes, Excel connects to Yahoo finance, downloads the data, performs some calculations and plots the charts!

If you like this spreadsheet, please consider linking to https://investexcel.net from your social networking account or website.

Download Excel Spreadsheet to Plot RSI, MACD, ATR, EMA and Historic Volatility from Ticker