Hey guys,

Wanted to share a simple MA Crosses indicator I’ve been using lately in Thinkorswim for Futures and Forex.

It gives signals when fast and slow moving averages cross and plots arrows directly on the chart. Nothing fancy — just a clean way to spot possible trend shifts without overloading the screen with indicators.

Main settings:

Fast MA: 20
Slow MA: 80
EMA
Daily aggregation

Script:

input price = FundamentalType.CLOSE;
input Period = AggregationPeriod.DAY;
input ActualPeriod = {default "Yes", "No"};

input FastLength = 20;
input SlowLength = 80;
input averageType = AverageType.exponential;

def period2 = getAggregationPeriod();
def agg = if !ActualPeriod then getAggregationPeriod() else Period;

plot Fast_MA = MovingAverage(averageType, Fundamental(price, period = agg), FastLength);
plot Slow_MA = MovingAverage(averageType, Fundamental(price, period = agg), SlowLength);

def bSignalDown = Crosses(Fast_MA, Slow_MA, CrossingDirection.ABOVE);
def bSignalUp = Crosses(Fast_MA, Slow_MA, CrossingDirection.BELOW);

plot up = if bSignalUp then high else double.NaN;
plot down = if bSignalDown then high else double.NaN;

up.SetPaintingStrategy(paintingStrategy.BOOLEAN_ARROW_down);
down.SetPaintingStrategy(paintingStrategy.BOOLEAN_ARROW_up);

up.SetDefaultColor(color.LIGHT_RED);
down.SetDefaultColor(color.LIGHT_GREEN);

Slow_MA.SetLineWeight(2);

Sharing it because simple indicators sometimes work better than overloaded setups. Maybe someone here will find it useful too.

alexjohng45 

Sharing it because simple indicators sometimes work better than overloaded setups.

@alexjohng45,

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for contributing a working script right out of the gate -- solid first post.

A few things worth noting about this setup:

The daily aggregation lock is a smart design choice. Locking the MAs to daily bars means signals don't repaint as intraday candles form, and it filters out a lot of the noise that kills EMA crossover strategies on shorter timeframes. There's backtest research across multiple assets showing daily EMA crossovers significantly outperform hourly setups -- H1 crossovers on instruments like NAS100 or EURUSD tend to hover near breakeven or lose, while D1 can carry a real edge.

One heads-up for anyone modifying the code: the variable names are inverted from what you'd expect -- bSignalDown fires on the bullish cross (fast above slow) and bSignalUp fires on the bearish cross. The arrow display is correct, but if you're building additional conditions off those variables, double-check the logic first or you'll get flipped signals.

On the 20/80 pair: it's a wider spread than common pairs like 9/21 or 20/50, so signals are less frequent but represent more significant trend shifts -- the 80 EMA covers roughly 4 months of daily data. It functions better as a trend filter than a pure entry trigger. Adding an ATR gate (skip signals when volatility is below its recent median) can help reduce whipsaw in flat, choppy conditions.

If you ever want to explore similar EMA-based strategy development natively in a futures platform, @NinjaTrader has good tooling for that.

TGIF! Have a good weekend!

-- Fi

"The fewer signals a system generates, the more seriously you can take each one."

oh nice 👌

are you planning to share more indicators in the future?

this one actually helped me quite a bit and hopefully it helped others too

just curious did you guys develop this indicator yourselves or was it based on an existing idea?

alexlopty45 

just curious did you guys develop this indicator yourselves or was it based on an existing idea?

@alexlopty45,

The thread doesn't spell it out -- alexjohng45 shared it as something they've been using without specifying the origin. Pretty common with TOS scripts, most are iterations on existing MA logic anyway.

If you want the backstory, worth asking alexjohng45 directly.

-- Fi

"The best indicators aren't always the ones you build -- sometimes they're the ones someone else already stress-tested and handed you for free."