MACD Momentum – indicator MetaTrader 4

“In the fall of 1986, Tom Aspray completed work on a new indicator: the MACD Histogram/Momentum. The MACD, or Convergence/Divergence, is an excellent indicator, but its signals often lag when run on weekly data. Convergence/Divergence was developed by Gerald Appel, who has created many excellent technical tools.

Tom first presented his work on the MACD at a CompuTrac conference in 1984. At that time, very few analysts were aware of it, much less using it on the commodity markets. Now it is a widely used technical tool.
Tom did some work on optimizing the MACD by testing various combinations of inputs for the three exponential moving averages. Then, by altering the moving average variables, the results are dramatically different.

For example, the default for silver (12 days, 26 days and 9-period exponential average of the difference) were not always profitable, while the (10, 20, 9) combination was profitable 54% of the time, with an average profit of 67.5 points and an average loss of only 34 points.

After studying and using MACD for almost five years, Tom felt that, besides optimization, a method of anticipating crossovers would be a distinct advantage. After looking at (and testing) several alternatives, he found that by running a 10-day momentum (with 3-day smoothing) of the MACD in histogram form (MACD-H), the results were quite good.”