I dont understand the unit of measurement that is the period could someone maybe visually explain on a graph where the period is?
You need to enter your indicator’s input to change the period. Let me also add that, the shorter the period is, the less it lags behind, but at the same time, the less accurate it is.
im asking in terms of; what does a period look like on a graph?
A period doesnt look like anything, MA is an indicator that works with a number of candles on a chart, that number is actually the period of MA, for example if the period is 10, it shows information about the previous 10 candles.
this one for example is the MA with period of 9, length and period are the same thing i guess.
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Hi,
A period refers to the amount of time that passes from the beginning to the end of the period from which a candlestick is drawn on the chart. Periods range from years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds. Is that clear or do you need to know more?
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“period” (as the word is being used on the website from which you quoted) means “number of bars” from which the SMA is calculated - some people call it “lookback period” or just “lookback” (just “lookback” is actually a better term)
people writing stuff like that on websites tend to assume (wrongly!) that everyone trades from timed bars, in other words a bar/candle closes and a new one opens after some specified time-period has elapsed (e.g. 5 minutes, 4 hours, a day, whatever), and if that were true, a “number of bars” would always be definable as a time-period
but it isn’t true, of course!
many people actually trade from bars with opens and closes measured and defined in ways other than the passage of time-units (e.g. volume transacted, price-ranges, etc.)
for this reason, “period” isn’t the right word to use (because it rests on a mistaken assumption), but “number of bars” was all they actually meant, in the example you quoted: they were just a bit careless with their wording