WMA (Weighted Moving Average)
The weighted moving average declines its weights linearly across the window, so the newest close counts most and the oldest counts least. It is the middle path between the SMA and the EMA.
The WMA assigns weights in a straight line. In a 20-bar window the newest close carries a weight of 20, the next 19, down to 1 for the oldest, and the weighted sum is divided by the total. Every bar in the window still matters, and the window has a hard edge, where the EMA's influence technically never reaches zero. The recent bars matter proportionally more, which pulls the line closer to current price than an SMA of the same period.
In practice the 20-day WMA gets used the way a 20-day SMA or EMA does: as a swing-trend line price should respect in a healthy move. Traders who prefer it argue that linear weighting is the honest compromise, more responsive than the SMA without the EMA's long memory tail. Screening for closes holding above it, or for price reclaiming it after a dip on volume, covers most of the daily-bar uses.
Its weakness is that it inherits both families' problems in moderation instead of escaping either. It lags a turn more than an EMA of the same length and whipsaws in a range more than an SMA. It is also the least-watched of the three. That matters: part of a moving average's usefulness is self-fulfilling, and fewer eyes on a line means less behaviour anchored to it.
The HMA is what happens when you refuse to stop at a halfway house. Alan Hull's average is built out of WMAs combined specifically to cancel the lag this one still carries. If the 20-day WMA and SMA are telling you different things about a chart, the difference is recent price action, by construction, since the two lines cover the same window and differ only in how they spread weight across it. I reach for it less often than either neighbour.
In Sift
Written as wma(20). A working scan — stocks above their 20-day weighted average on half again the usual volume:
where close > wma(20) and rel_volume > 1.51
of the 500 most-traded NSE stocks match today, as of 25 Sept 2026
Common questions
What is the difference between WMA and EMA?
Both weight recent prices more, by different rules. The WMA's weights fall in a straight line and stop dead at the window's edge, so bar 21 of a 20-bar WMA has zero influence. The EMA's weights decay geometrically and never quite reach zero. In practice the EMA of a given period reacts slightly faster.
Is the weighted moving average better for trading?
No moving average is better in general. Each trades lag against noise at a different rate, and which trade pays depends on the stock and the holding period. The WMA sits between the SMA and the EMA on that spectrum. Run the same condition with each average through the hit-rate replay and compare, rather than taking anyone's claim on faith.