I've had some success using MA crossovers, but it's not easy.

First, I had to come up with a basis MA that reflected a reference point that the market seemed to respect. After experimentation I selected SMA (Close, 55). Secondly, I needed a 2nd MA that had both a shorter time frame and less built-in lag to boot. My choice was HMA (Median, 22). Note: your settings will be different based upon instrument, data feed, computer processor, etc.

I don't like having too much information on my screen and really didn't want more than one MA being displayed. For that reason I edited the Awesome Oscillator so it showed the relationship between the two MA's. For the sake of the images below I left the HMA showing, but normally it is removed. The nice thing about the Oscillator is that it shows market cycles clearly. Green up, red down.

Lastly, market noise affects my trading and any help to filter it out is a plus. Consequently, I changed by bar style to Line on Close. The trick is to set the line width to something large (50 in this case). This, in effect, dumbs down the data so I only receive basic market information.

1] Is this a market I want to be in right now?

2] What is the general trend?

3] Are entry and exit points easily defined?

So the result is my MA Chart for Dummies, which is just my speed. I don't like getting too trigger happy with the mouse entering or exiting trades. Below are 4 consecutive screen shots from a time frame I picked at random.